


They Never Went Further, They Never Went Back

by EachPeachPearPlum



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Bucky Barnes, Asexual Character, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 1, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Identity Porn, M/M, Mechanic Tony Stark, Polyamory Negotiations, Secret Identity, Vigilante Iron Man, teeny tiny bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EachPeachPearPlum/pseuds/EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: The vigilante Iron Man is in the habit of showing up at a fight and disappearing again when it's done, whether the Avengers want his help or not. Steve has had more than enough of it, which is why, when Bucky finally manages to get him with a tracker before he flies off, Steve isn't going to let little things like a broken leg, an overprotective boyfriend, and a mysterious satellite deadzone get in the way of tracking him down.Their - okay, fine,Steve's- truck breaking down on them might be a bit more of an obstacle, but at least the mechanic they've found, a guy called Tony, is nice enough to put them up - or should that beput up with them? - for a few nights while he works on repairing it.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 348
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020, Iron Man's Identity is a Secret, Peach’s BBB 2020 works, Peach’s Stucky bingo 2020 works, Peach’s TSB Mark IV works, Star Spangled Bingo 2020, Stucky Bingo 2020, Tony Stark Flash Bingo, WinterIronShield Bang Ultimate Collection





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MassiveSpaceWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveSpaceWren/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/682753) by MassiveSpaceWren. 



> This fic has been written for the WinterIronShield Reverse Big Bang, inspired by art created by the fabulous [MassiveSpaceWren](https://massivespacewren.tumblr.com/). Please hit up the tumblr post to shout about how gorgeous the art is, won't you?
> 
> I have huge amounts of gratitude to Dee (for the speedy beta), J (for putting up with me whining for absolutely ages about this fic, to the point where they offered to ghost-write it for me more than once. Didn't need it in the end, but the offer was so very appreciated anyway), to everyone else who has cheered me on while I was writing it, and of course to Wren, who created the gorgeous art and banner, provided ideas and inspiration when I had none, and never once complained about the fact that I am the most terribly last-minute person ever. It has been an honour to work with you, Wren.
> 
> I'm using this to fill squares for Bucky Barnes Bingo (BBB), Tony Stark September Flash Bingo (TSB), Star Spangled Bingo (SSB), and Stucky Bingo - please see end notes for details

If anyone had asked him a few years ago, Tony would have said dying would be the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to him. Now that it’s happened, he’s damn pleased with how it’s turned out.

Anthony Stark has been dead for several years now, murdered by his godfather and business partner shortly after a disastrous business trip to Afghanistan. Upon Stark’s death and Stane’s subsequent arrest, Stark Industries passed into the very capable hands of Virginia Potts, and has since branched out from weapons manufacturing to renewable energy, low-cost water purification, and medical technology that puts the rest of the world to shame, flourishing far beyond anything the Stark family could have anticipated.

Tony Edwards, on the other hand, works as a mechanic in a town so small even google maps doesn’t recognise it, and he wouldn’t change it for the world. His life is small and quiet and private; he gets up in the morning, works on his neighbours’ cars, fixes up anything around town that isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, and sometimes designs things that are absolutely nothing like the products Stark Industries releases a few months later. It’s dull, and entirely un-newsworthy, and that’s exactly how Tony likes it.

Oh, and there’s the maybe Iron Man thing as well.


	2. Chapter One

“We’ve got this!” is the first thing Captain America says when Tony hacks his way into their comms. “Go home, Iron Man!”

“Suuuure,” Tony drawls, “you've absolutely got this, I'm just here to watch.” In the safety of his helmet, his voice is absolutely brimming with sarcasm, though god knows how it sounds coming out of the suit’s speakers. Conveying tone was a much lower priority than anonymity when he designed the thing, and it hasn't occurred to him to check until now; clearly, Tony has no way to make sure his intention is clear other than shooting the robot… giraffe (maybe, though who the fuck would design that?) that's creeping up behind Cap.

“I knew that was there,” Cap snaps, narrowing his pretty blue eyes at Tony.

The comms are filled with the sound of someone laughing – Tony’s not sure who, other than that it’s not Widow, unless she has a particularly masculine chuckle – and then a low, gruff voice says, “Might not hurt to have the robot around, given what we’re up against.”

JARVIS helpfully brings up an arrow on the HUD so Tony knows which direction he should be flipping off (the Winter Soldier is far better at hiding in the shadows than any gun-toting, metal-armed, muscular masked man should be). “Not a robot, asshole,” he says.

“Prove it!” Cap snaps. “Take off the mask.”

“I will when you do,” Tony answers; sure, it makes him sound like a five year old, but between Captain America’s cowl, Hawkeye’s ridiculous pointy mask, the Hulk’s mundane human alter-ego, the Winter Soldier’s black goggles on black mask on all black outfit, Thor being an actual goddamn alien and Black Widow’s ability to change her appearance so as to be completely unrecognisable in about thirty seconds, those fuckers haven’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to anonymity. Hell, the only Avenger Tony has a solid ID and full background on is Falcon, AKA Sam Wilson, recruited out of the Air Force after his successful trial of those prototype wings Tony designed a few years back, part time VA counsellor, occasional Avenger, and generally speaking politer to Tony than all the others put together.

Predictably, Cap doesn’t immediately unmask and offer his name and a handshake, and Tony flashes him a smug grin he obviously can’t see.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. We crushing the robot zoo or not?”

Cap lets out a low, very angry expletive (hypocritical, given that the last time Tony showed up at an Avengers vs robots showdown Spangles scolded him for swearing), then chucks his shield in Tony’s direction.

Tony dodges left, hears the welcome thud as it hits the zebrot JARVIS was about to warn him about, and then things really start to get fun.

X

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time Tony’s come up against robot animals. Hell, it’s not even the first time this month, because some twisted moron has decided this is the perfect way to mildly irritate the Avengers on a semi-regular basis. Well, their goal is probably closer to ‘murder’ than ‘irritate’, but half the time the robots are so crappy that the uptight assholes could easily manage without Tony being here, and if the Zoomaton (yes, really) wasn’t also using the animabots to test out their very flawed attempts at replicating the arc reactor he’d be at home right now, fixing the sweet ‘69 Mustang he’s restoring to sell on.

The arc reactor is his property, and not even Pepper has access to the blueprints for it, so anytime JARVIS lets Tony know some idiot is trying to put their own villainous spin on Tony’s brilliance, he makes a point to show up and kick their ass.

The animals aren’t bad likenesses, if he ignores the fact that most of them are lacking hair, fur, scales, or anything at all to cover their metal bodies. The noises they make are pretty much nightmarish, though, like the semi-competent lunatic who designed the things decided to record themselves impersonating the animals they were making without ever actually having _heard_ the actual animals, and Tony would very much like to destroy them all before the sound drives him every bit as insane as the person who created them obviously is.

On the plus side, the things are easy to take down, though trying to make sure JARVIS gets a full scan of all of them before someone destroys them complicates matters somewhat. It has to be done, though; Tony needs to know what they’re all made of, needs to know there’s nothing too dangerous to be out there in the world, since there’s no way he can take all the scattered pieces with him. Sure, he can get Pep to get Damage Control to claim everything under the cover of clean up, but Tony doesn’t trust the Avengers to hand it all over to them, and one fucked up nutjob running around making knock-off arc reactors is already one too many.

So, Tony’s maybe a little too busy focusing his destruction on the elephant and the top-secret tech powering it to notice the boa constructor slithering up to Cap.

The comms go wild, Avengers yelling at him and at each other, Cap swearing steadily under his breath as he repeatedly slams his shield into thing currently attempting to suffocate his leg, Tony and Hawkeye shouting at him to stand still so they can blow it up without also blowing him up, the Soldier arguing that even if Cap stands still they shouldn’t be shooting anything explosive at him, and then Black Widow gymnastics her way up to him and swiftly dispatches the robo-snake.

“You’re terrifying,” Tony says flatly, earning himself a flash of gleaming teeth as she grins at him.

Cap spares a second to frisbee his shield at Falcon, then crumples to the ground, curling his torso over his leg, which looks very much not right. “I’ll be fine,” he mutters unconvincingly, his breath coming in a pained hiss.

No one moves, aside from Falcon’s dive to catch the shield (and the fact that it falls far short of him is just more evidence that Cap is very clearly not at his best), and the remnants of the animal army start to regroup.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Cap insists, the goddamn liar. “Take care of this.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Widow says, glaring Cap into submission when he starts to protest. “Deal with others.”

Tony knows Widow is supposedly 100% unenhanced human, but the speed with which Tony and the remaining Avengers turn their backs on her and Cap and return to fighting the mechanised animals definitely suggests otherwise.

X

“Give him here,” Tony offers once the last creature has been obliterated, because it’s either that or laugh uncontrollably at the way Widow is attempting to hold up Cap, and Tony has definitely learnt his lesson about laughing at Black Widow.

“No,” Cap protests, despite the fact that he’s clearly in a hell of a lot of pain and he absolutely shouldn’t be putting any weight on his left leg when it looks like that.

Widow is a hell of a lot more sensible than Cap is, because she immediately stops walking, forcing the injured idiot to do the same.

“Thanks,” she says, waiting until Tony’s got Cap’s arm over his shoulder before ducking out of the way.

“Just tell me where I’m taking him.” Tony ignores Cap’s increasingly irate complaints and scoops him up into a bridal carry, deciding getting the man to medical treatment quickly trumps any discomfort he might feel.

“Put me down!”

“Will do, Red-White-and-Blue, just as soon as I get you to a bed.”

“Like hell you will!” Cap answers, pounding his fist against Tony’s shoulder, the vibrations buzzing through him in a way they absolutely shouldn’t.

“St- _Captain_ ,” the Soldier says, audibly done with Cap’s crap, and Tony’s too busy blinking back surprise at his own reaction to the commanding tone to do more than put a mental pin in the possible partial name to revisit it later. “ _Behave_.”

Cap continues muttering an impressive array of expletives under his breath (this from the man who has lectured Tony more than once about his language), but he does stop trying to beat Tony into putting him down, so that’s a plus.

“Where am I taking him?” Tony asks.

“Nowhere!” Cap yelps, slamming his fist into the side of Tony’s helmet again. “Put me down!”

“Stop that,” Tony tells him. “Your leg is broken in multiple places, and you do _not_ want me to drop you on it.”

“Damn right he doesn’t,” Falcon agrees. “C’mon, you can follow me back.”

X

“You’re not coming in,” Steve says as Iron Man deposits him on a gurney at the main door to the compound. He’s surprisingly gentle about it, the same way he has been since he picked Steve up on the battlefield, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an unknown entity who shows up to their fights when they’re least expecting him and steers clear on the rare occasion they could actually use him.

Iron Man is a wildcard, with an agenda they don’t know anything about, and until that changes Steve doesn’t want anything to do with him.

“Thanks, man,” Sam says, ignoring Steve completely despite being well aware of his very reasonable objections. “We’d have struggled to get him back without you.”

Iron Man nods, the motion impressively smooth given the fact that he’s completely encased in metal. “I’d say _any time_ , but I’m worried you might want to take me up on it.” He throws them a very sloppy salute before taking off, not waiting for either of them to answer him.

Sam can’t possibly miss Steve’s grimace, but it seems like he chooses not to acknowledge it, instead stepping back so that a team of medical assistants can push Steve’s gurney through the building to the medical centre.

Steve might be able to power through high levels of pain when he’s out in the field, but right now the adrenaline is wearing off, he’s in a safe place, and if he was baseline human he’d be begging for painkillers right about now. As it is, they’ve yet to find something he won’t burn through in minutes, so Steve lets the haze of pain take him, time blurring, jumping around unevenly.

He’s not sure how long it takes for them to get his leg x-rayed and the bones set, but by the time he’s got a cast from his toes to his thigh – despite his vehement protests, Dr Cho insists it’s necessary – it’s dark out and his stomach sounds like one of the animals they fought off this afternoon.

Helen also insists he spend the night under observation, just in case the snake managed to mangle more than his leg. Again, all Steve’s protests fall on deaf ears, and Helen herself escorts Steve to the room he’s going to be staying in, glaring him into submission every time he dares to open his mouth. 

Bucky’s there already, smirking at him from the seat next to what is apparently going to be Steve’s bed for the night. He’s got a carton of Chinese takeout in one hand, and he waves the chopsticks in his other hand at the stack of similar cartons on the table beside him.

“Figured you’d be hungry,” he says, waiting until Steve’s settled as comfortably as he’s going to get before passing him the first box.

Steve’s most of the way through the third one before he can slow down enough to taste what he’s eating, which is also when he remembers his manners enough to mumble, “Thank you,” around a mouthful of pork chow mein. “Go on, then,” he adds, because Bucky is clearly desperate to berate him for his recklessness, his inattention, his _stupid goddamn deathwish_ , or whatever the hell it is he’s done wrong this time.

“You don’t have to be so hostile,” is not what Steve was expecting him to say.

“We were fighting an army of robotic animals that were trying to kill us,” Steve points out. “If anything, I think this” – he motions to his leg – “means I wasn’t hostile enough.”

“Dumbass,” says Bucky, swiping Steve upside the head; clearly, he’s almost as worried as Helen is about Steve’s health, because he does it with only a fraction of the force he’d usually use. “You don’t have to be so hostile to Iron Man.”

Steve grimaces, swallowing his next mouthful (chilli beef, now) before answering. “I don’t trust him, Buck.”

“Not expecting you to, Stevie. Just maybe don’t tell him to piss off the second he shows up, yeah? Particularly not when we’re outnumbered by robots.”

Steve absolutely does not want to concede that Bucky might have a point there, but he’s also not sure he has a choice. Iron Man is in the habit of showing up, blowing stuff up, and then disappearing again, with no clear motive behind the targets he hits. He doesn’t join all of the Avengers’ fights, and Steve hasn’t yet managed to figure out a pattern to the ones that he does join, but for all he’s a loose cannon, he’s never fought _against_ the Avengers.

Yet, anyway.

“Maybe,” Steve says, but he’s downright begrudging about doing so.

Bucky grins, clapping him on the shoulder. “Good,” he says, nodding. “Besides, it’s way easier to get him with a tracker when he doesn’t think you want him dead.”

Steve sits up straighter. “You’re tracking him?”

“You’ve met me, Stevie. You really think I trust him either?” Bucky pulls his phone from his pocket, waving it in Steve’s face, then snatches it back before Steve can grab it from him. “He’s still on the move. Nat and me’ll head out after him tomorrow, you just stay here until your leg’s fixed up.”

 _Okay_ , Steve thinks. _That’s definitely not happening_.


	3. Chapter Two

It was asking too much to expect the signal from Iron Man’s tracker to still be working the following morning, Bucky should have known that. All it takes is a glance at his suit to know the guy’s obviously a genius when it comes to technology, so there was no chance of the tracker surviving if he found it, but Bucky had hoped maybe landing it in the groove behind the plate covering Iron Man’s right shoulder might be enough for it to go unnoticed.

It’s weird, though. The signal hasn’t settled in one place, the way it would have if Iron Man had either landed or discovered the tracker and dropped it somewhere, nor has it disappeared completely, so Iron Man didn’t just find it and destroy it either.

Instead, the signal travelled about three hundred miles in a more or less straight line, then started… sputtering, is the best way Bucky can describe it. It spent the next twenty miles blinking in and out, jumping from one place to another a couple of miles away in a matter of seconds, and only then did it actually vanish.

Bucky’s memories might be a jigsaw with half the pieces missing, but he’s as sure as he can be that he’s never seen a tracker act like that before.

“Yeah,” Natalia says, taking his phone from him to look at the map showing the tracker results. They’re in the kitchen, ostensibly so they can plan their journey but mostly because Bucky a) needs to fill up on caffeine before they set off and b) wants to avoid Steve’s _please don’t leave me behind_ puppy eyes. “There’s a satellite deadzone over that way. SHIELD keeps an eye on all news reports over that way, sends in a team to do a full sweep of the area every few months to make sure no one’s taking advantage of the blind spot. So far, everything’s come back clean.”

“I see,” he answers sceptically; given how they missed the fascist organisation hiding within their ranks like a Matryoshka doll, Bucky doesn’t actually trust SHIELD to know their ass from their elbow, but Natalia still has a slightly higher opinion of the organisation than he does so he’s not about to say that to her.

Judging by the tiny frown Nat’s wearing, she knows he’s thinking it anyway, but she doesn’t pass comment. “Could be that Iron Man has his base of operations in the deadzone, could just be that flying into the area futzed with his tracker and he carried on out the other side. It’s still worth following as far as we can, though.”

“Yeah.” Bucky drains the dregs of his coffee, then pushes himself to his feet. “See you in the garage in five, then?”

X

Of course, it’s only when he gets to the garage that Bucky discovers the very large wrench in his plan to go after Iron Man without Steve realising he’s leaving and demanding to come along with him. That wrench is over six feet tall, possessed of the most implausible shoulders-to-waist ratio Bucky has ever encountered, and is leaning against the concrete support pillar closest to the elevator Bucky has just walked out of.

“What the fuck, Steve!” Bucky says, his tone making it very clear how much of a question it really fucking isn’t. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

Steve shrugs, grinning in a way that makes his split lip look particularly ugly. “I’m fine, Buck. Stop fussing.”

“Your leg is broken in four places!” Bucky can’t believe he’s saying this, that it’s the kind of thing that even needs saying, except oh, wait, it’s Steve, and this is the same stupendously obvious shit Bucky’s been pointing out since the nineteen-fucking-thirties. This is no goddamn different to him trying to convince the puny, sickly, stubborn idiot that if he couldn’t breathe he shouldn’t be enlisting, or trying to keep him from picking fights with everyone he meets, or… Well, Bucky should be past the point of being surprised by the stupid shit Steve keeps doing, is what he’s saying. “You’re not coming with us!”

“Three places,” Steve answers, because that’s _obviously_ so much better. “Helen did another x-ray this morning, the smallest break is already healed, and the others are looking way better.”

“Oh, well, if it’s only _three_ breaks, that’s completely different. Of course you can come.”

Because Steve is a fucking dumbass, he completely misses the sarcasm practically pouring from Bucky, so Bucky’s hopes that he’ll sulk his way out of the garage and back to his hospital bed are brutally dashed. Instead, Steve leans down to pick up his duffle bag, then hobbles his way over to the beat up crap-pile he chooses to call a truck.

“No,” Bucky says firmly. “Hell no, Steve.”

“You’re not going without me!”

“Uh, yeah, I really am.” Bucky heads to the key safe, deliberately ignoring the ones for Steve’s truck as he rummages for the ones to Nat’s Stingray instead.

A split second of feeling like there’s icy water trickling down the back of his neck is all the warning Bucky gets before Natalia’s hand smacks his aside.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” she says, twirling her key fob around her index finger. “I’ve learnt my lesson about letting the two of you borrow my things.”

“That was Clint’s fault,” Steve and Bucky say, so perfectly in time that Bucky doesn’t realise Steve’s speaking until they’re done.

“Suuuuure,” Nat answers, giving Bucky an incredibly self-satisfied smile. “You’re not taking my car.”

Bucky pouts at her, even though he knows his limited emotional manipulation skills only work on Steve, and even then it’s only half the time (see, just for example, the fact that Steve hasn’t gone back up to his hospital room like a sensible human being would). All Nat does is smirk even wider, her keys vanishing into the ether even though Bucky refuses to take his eyes off them.

“I hate you,” he says, only half joking. “I guess this means you’re staying behind.”

“I’d have thought two big, strong men like yourselves could handle it,” Nat says, batting her eyelashes innocently. “Of course, if you really need little old me to back you up, you only have to ask.”

Steve laughs, because of course he does, the bastard, and then chucks his bag into the back of the truck before shucking off the shield and adding that too. “See you in a few days, Nat.”

“Not if I see you first,” she answers lightly, with a flick of her wrist that sends the keys to Steve’s truck flying across the garage to him. “You boys have fun.”

Bucky really wants to stick around and argue her into coming with him instead of Steve, but the dumbass has apparently decided having possession of the keys gives him the right to drive, and there’s no way in hell Bucky’s going to let that happen.

X

Tony’s on his back staring up into the innards of a Camry almost as old as he is and also on the phone attempting to reassure Rhodey that _yes_ , he’s okay and _no_ , he and Pepper don’t need to show up to check on him when he hears the desperate groaning of an engine in severe distress.

“Gotta go, Platypus,” he says, because the owner of the unhappy vehicle is unlikely to politely wait outside for him to finish his call. Tony put a hell of a lot of effort into faking his own death, setting up a completely new identity, and staying off the radar since then, and he is absolutely not going to ruin his nice life here by having someone overhear Rhodey Sunday-naming him as he berates him for his actions as Iron Man.

“Tony, you can’t ju-”

“I promise, I’ll call back later and let you yell at me all you like, Rhodeybear, but right now I’ve got customers to deal with, okay?”

Rhodey sighs a huge, exasperated sigh. “You better, Tones,” he says, then laughs a little. “I still can’t get over the idea of you trying to help people without calling them all idiots.”

“Please, I’ll call anyone an idiot if that’s what they are, and since there isn’t another mechanic for a good fifty, sixty miles, they just have to deal with it.”

“Of course you’d do that, Tones,” Rhodey says, then hangs up.

Tony wheels out from under the car, then pushes himself to his feet and does a quick once-over of his workspace. There’s nothing there that obviously points towards his secret identity (or, for that matter, his _actual_ identity), so he grabs a rag from the closest workbench and wipes his hands on it as he heads outside.

The truck parked outside looks like it’s damn lucky to have made it as far as Tony’s shop. It’s ancient, beat to hell, and the bits of the front bumper, the hood, and the side panel closest to Tony that aren’t made entirely of rust are different colours, clearly scavenged from other vehicles.

“I can tell you right now, you’d be better off breaking this up for parts and buying a new one,” Tony says. “Assuming there’s any parts of it worth selling, that is.”

“You don’t hafta tell me that,” says the guy climbing out the driver’s side door. “Unfortunately, the dumbass who owns it is freakishly attached to the thing. For fuck’s sake, Steve, wait until I get there!”

Tony reckons that last part is probably directed at the blond about to climb out of the passenger seat, though it only becomes clear why when he jumps down and his left leg buckles under him. He catches himself on the truck door before he hits the ground, but his face is creased with pain, and Tony hurries in his direction.

“See,” says the first guy, rounding the truck at a much more casual pace. “He’s a dumbass.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony says slowly, because maybe it’s not his place to agree but so far, Steve isn’t doing much to counter his friend’s assessment of his intelligence. “You need a hand there?”

Not-Steve (who also happens to be dark-haired and blue-eyed, wearing jeans that hug his thighs beautifully and a bulky jacket that does nothing to hide how ripped he is, so why is it Tony can’t think of a better nickname for him than Not-Steve?) shakes his head, loops Steve’s arm over his shoulder, and gets them both upright. “I got him,” he says, making the fact that he’s practically carrying Steve (also blue-eyed and dressed in jeans, though he’s paired them with a tee-shirt that has to be at least a size too small and, boy, there is not an ounce of fat on that man) look completely effortless. “You got some place I can dump him?”

“ _Dump me_?” Steve demands, petulant as hell despite the fact that he’s a grown man and he’s practically being carried.

Not-Steve just grins at him, and Tony decides to ignore absolutely all of that (couple’s squabbles are absolutely none of his business, and while _none of his business_ might not usually work as a deterrent, he more than learned his lesson about getting involved in other people’s relationships a few years ago with Rhodey and Pepper).

“Yeah,” he says, leading them inside and gesturing past the Camry towards a handful of chairs. None of them are particularly comfortable, and they’re even less clean, but it’s not like Tony _wants_ people hanging around while he’s working. The less habitable the place is, the more people will be inclined to bring in their vehicles and then clear off, which is exactly what should happen.

Still, neither Steve nor Not-Steve seems overly concerned by the fact that most of the furniture looks like someone could have died on it; Steve doesn’t so much sit down as collapse backward, and Not-Steve immediately drags one of the other chairs around to face him for him to prop his leg up on.

“ _Stay_ ,” Not-Steve says firmly, waiting until Steve gives him a very begrudging nod before taking a step back, then turning to Tony again. “Hi,” he greets, offering out his hand for Tony to shake. “I’m Bucky, and the idiot with the sprained ankle and the shitty truck is Steve. Obviously anyone with a brain knows he’d be better off junking it than getting it fixed, but is there any chance you could give it a go anyway?”

Tony holds his hands up, a clear _I’m filthy, you don’t want to shake these_ , and smiles at both of them. “Tony,” he says. “Mrs Ryan is coming by in about half an hour to pick up this thing, but I can take a look at yours after. There’s a diner a few hundred yards that way” – Tony points north, not that it’s really necessary to give a direction; depending on where they’re coming from, they either drove past it on their way through town or they drove through miles of absolutely nothing before arriving at Tony’s shop and therefore know it’s gotta be the other way – “if you think Steve can walk that far.”

“I can walk it,” Steve says immediately, making like he’s going to stand up.

“The hell you can!”

“ _Or_ ,” Tony finishes, “you can wait here until I’m done.”

Since their decision has exactly zero influence on the work Tony still has to finish before Mrs Ryan gets here, he doesn’t wait to hear it. Still, he can’t help but overhear bits of their conversation in between his efforts to persuade recalcitrant bolts into behaving themselves (okay, fine, he’s absolutely eavesdropping, but so fucking what).

“No.”

“But-”

“ _No_.”

“I can-”

“You can’t.” Bucky sighs, loudly.

“I’m not a kid, Bucky.”

“No? You’re clearly not a responsible adult, either, otherwise you’d have listened to Doc Cho about your leg!”

Unfortunately, the next bolt requires rather more persuasion than the previous ones, and Tony is too busy cursing at it to hear exactly what is wrong with Steve’s leg (sprained ankle, his ass; there’s no way it’s something as minor as that, what with the way Bucky had to practically carry him inside). In fact, his swearing seems to remind them that they have an audience, and they carry out the rest of their conversation in mutters too quiet for him to hear until eventually Steve snaps, “Fine, Bucky! You win. I’ll stay here.”

“Good,” Bucky answers, sounding smug as hell, the way any sensible person should when they win an argument. “Here,” he adds. “Play games, read a book, watch a movie, whatever. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Steve doesn’t reply, not even to thank his boyfriend for whatever he handed him (a phone or a tablet, Tony assumes, though if they’ve not got whatever Steve chooses already downloaded he’s going to be shit out of luck, thanks to the special signal-fucking shield Tony’s got set up around town). Bucky seems to be used to this, though, because he doesn’t wait around for a response before his footsteps approach the Camry.

“I’m heading to the diner,” he says. “You want me to bring you back anything?”

“Coffee, black,” Tony answers immediately, long before he remembers this is the kind of request he’s supposed to politely decline when it comes from strangers, particularly if those strangers are also customers. “And pie,” he adds, in an effort to make it more acceptable. “Get a receipt, and I’ll knock it off your bill.”

“Nah, I reckon we can afford a little something for a man hard at work,” Bucky says, chuckling, and then his feet leave Tony’s limited field of vision and he leaves the garage.

Tony’s sort of expecting to immediately hear Steve get up (or try to, anyway), maybe to follow after Bucky or maybe just because even with only their very limited interaction Tony thinks it’s safe to say he’s exactly that kind of stubborn bastard.

He doesn’t make a sound, though, and without anything to distract him Tony has the Camry ready to roll and parked in the lot outside in plenty of time for Mrs Ryan’s arrival.

It’s only as he’s moved the towel he uses to keep from getting customers’ cars dirty when he sits in them that Tony discovers the slight snag in his plan to take a look at the truck next.

“Can I have the keys?” he asks Steve (who is indeed holding a cellphone in his hands, though he isn’t doing anything with it), and gets a very blank look in return.

“Sorry?”

“Keys. You know, those little metal things people use to lock and unlock things? Can’t take a look at the truck without ‘em.”

That isn’t strictly true, not when Tony could easily get the truck’s doors open (and then jump start it, if the occasion calls for it), but that would be rude and also Tony thinks Steve would try and stop him if he did it, and given his injured leg and angry boyfriend Tony doesn’t much want to risk that.

“I don’t have them,” Steve answers, shrugging. “Bucky wouldn’t trust me not to try moving the truck for you, if he left them with me.”

“And it didn’t occur to him to give them to me?” Tony sighs. “Guess we’re waiting to get started until he gets back.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a mechanic? If you can’t get the hood open without the keys, I’m taking our business elsewhere.”

“Good luck with that,” Tony says, laughing. “There isn’t another mechanic for sixty miles, and I don’t think that thing is gonna make it that far. And that’s assuming you pick the right direction to travel in, because I’m sure as hell not gonna point it out to you.”

Steve joins in his laughter. “Go on, go break into my truck,” he says, then sort of waves his phone in the air. “I’ll wait here until you’re done.”


	4. Chapter Three

Bucky doesn’t feel great about leaving an injured Steve behind, but once it became obvious the truck was giving up the ghost, the stupid idiot decided to saw his cast off with one of the knives Bucky’d hidden under the seat.

“ _But what if we’re stuck here overnight_ ,” Bucky imitates as he walks from the garage towards the rest of the very small town. “ _People will notice if I’m wearing a cast and then I’m not. They’ll ask questions, and then where will our secret identities be?_ Fucking dumbass,” he scoffs, dropping the (admittedly awful) impression of Steve.

Thing is, if Steve had been willing to keep his cast on and keep up the broken leg act even after he’s healed up, they could both be out here, sniffing around this town in the middle of the satellite deadzone for any trace of Iron Man. Even if Steve would have been stuck hobbling around with his cast, at least he’d be independently mobile, and they could be done in half the time rather than Bucky having to either investigate alone or haul the stupid, irresponsible, reckless idiot around with him.

Sometimes, Bucky thinks, his life would be so much easier if he hadn’t fished him out of the Potomac two years ago. Fucking miserable, sure, and so goddamn lonely without Steve and the Avengers to keep him human (and that’s assuming Hydra didn’t get him back, which would have been infinitely worse), and, okay, saving Steve was the first real decision Bucky made in almost seventy years and there’s no power on Earth that could make him wish he’d done differently, but he does occasionally wonder what an easy life might be like.

He doesn’t spend too long checking out the town, partly because he’s left an injured Steve alone in a strange place but also because there really isn’t all that much town to check. There’s the road Tony’s shop is on, a couple of others that join it, maybe a hundred houses clustered around a few stores, and the diner Tony directed him to. Bucky walks the length and breadth of it in twenty minutes, making a mental list of the places he wants to take a longer look at after dark, then hits up the diner for three coffees and a blackberry and apple pie that smells incredible before heading back to Tony’s shop.

The mechanic is hard at work when he gets there, bent over the truck’s engine. He’s not swearing at it the way he did with the car he was working on before Bucky went out; instead, he seems to be sympathising with it, murmuring about _oh, darling, what have the nasty men done to you_ and _it’ll be okay, don’t worry, I’ll make it better_.

Bucky stands there listening for a minute, amused, then clears his throat. “Coffee’s here.”

Tony reaches out his left hand, not looking up. “Thanks,” he says, raising the cardboard cup to his lips and smearing engine grease across his cheek in the process. Grinning, Bucky watches him a moment longer to see if he’s going to notice it, but all Tony does is reach out for a flat enough place to balance his drink before continuing his efforts to soothe the engine into functioning.

Steve, miraculously, is still sitting where Bucky left him, though he does seem to have shifted his chair a few inches to the right, just far enough that he can see Tony working. Again, Bucky grins, because not once in almost a century has Steve been accused of subtlety, and Bucky wouldn’t have the enormous dope any other way.

“Enjoying the view?” he asks quietly, nudging Steve’s good leg with his foot to get his attention.

“What?” 

“You heard me,” Bucky answers, but he’s not going to push it for now. He sits, passing Steve his coffee, then puts his own on the chair next to him so that he can open the pie box.

Steve frowns when Bucky pulls a butterfly knife from his boot (what, like he’s supposed to go wandering around an unknown town unarmed?), but he doesn’t complain when Bucky cuts two healthy slices and offers him first pick.

“Thanks,” he says, already chewing, the mannerless heathen. “God, that’s good pie.”

They’ve both been hungry often enough that they don’t sit on ceremony when there’s food in front of them, and Steve waits until they’ve finished eating (he’s right, it really is good pie) before he says, “You find anything?”

“Not yet,” Bucky answers. “Middle of the day isn’t the best time to go poking around, so I’ll head out after dark, do a more thorough check.”

“I’ll c-”

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.”

Steve pulls out a middlishly stern face (just one of his very many stern faces), like he thinks that bullshit is suddenly going to start working on Bucky. “I can manage, Buck. You don’t need to keep coddling me.”

“I will tie you to the bed if I have to.”

“Kinky,” Tony says; Bucky knew he was on his way over to them, because no one other than Steve has been able to get close to him without him knowing about it since the first time Hydra had him (Natalia’s tried, so far without joy, and Carter got close a time or two, back when Bucky had issues but not quite as many as he does now), but Steve’s lobster-blush proves how unobservant he is.

(No, that blush isn’t exactly why Bucky said it. Where on Earth would someone get an idea like that?)

“It’s not-” Steve starts. “That wasn’t- I mean-”

“Hey, what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is absolutely none of my business,” Tony says, though there’s a glimmer of interest behind his smirk that suggests maybe he’d like it to be, and Bucky’s definitely going to be talking to Steve about that. It’ll have to be later, though, and not just because Tony is changing the subject.

“So, putting aside your bedroom exploits for the moment, let's talk about the actual reason you’re here,” he says, wiping his hands mostly clean again. There’s still a smear of grease on his cheek, and it doesn’t escape Bucky’s notice that Steve isn’t making any attempt to point it out either. “The good news is, it’s an easy enough fix. Bad news, I’ll need to order in some of the parts, and it’ll take at least a couple of days for them to arrive. You’re welcome to use my phone to call wherever it is you call home and get someone to come pick you and it up, if you don’t want to wait around for it.”

“Nah, we don’t have anywhere to be for a while,” Bucky answers, because Steve’ll spend the next ten minutes mentally arguing with himself about how it wouldn’t be secure to call home on a complete stranger’s phone but they don’t have any service on their cells and they have to let the team know they won’t be around for emergencies but if there _is_ an emergency they have a responsibility to be there and… Well, Bucky’s gonna call this one, even if he knows he’ll have to sit through Steve berating him for taking them out of play later (never mind the fact that the idiot can’t do any world-saving until he can walk unaided again). “I’m gonna guess this isn’t a motel kinda town, but is there anywhere else we can spend the night?”

“There used to be a bed and breakfast in town,” Tony says. “Only, the middle of freaking nowhere with no cell service isn’t much of a tourist hot spot, as it turns out. They closed down a while back.”

As information goes, that’s basically useless, but Bucky’s not about to insult the person fixing their ride, or at least not where he can hear it. “Guess we’re bedding down in the back of the truck, then,” he says.

“Seriously?” Tony demands.

Bucky shrugs, as does Steve. “Yeah? We’ve both slept in way worse places than that.” Like, just for example, the trenches, the arctic circle, a cryotube; hell, even the couch cushions they used to sleep on as kids weren’t exactly comfortable.

Tony looks at them both in turn, his expression so incredulous it’s almost amusing, then throws his hands up. “To hell with that. I only live upstairs. The guest room might not be massive, and you aren’t going to like the decor, but it’s still gotta be better than that.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, because apparently he’s deciding to play the _polite houseguest_ role for a bit. Which, fine, that makes a very nice change from the shitty mood he’s been in since Iron Man showed up to fight the mechanical animals with them yesterday, but it’d be nice if he waited until Bucky accepted Tony’s offer before he started behaving himself. “We wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“Hey, as long as you don’t snore loud enough for me to hear you down the hall, it’s no trouble at all.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says, and hopes Tony is a heavy enough sleeper that he won’t hear him climbing out the window at midnight.

X

Inviting two complete strangers to stay in his home is a risk, there’s denying that, but Tony doesn’t keep anything important lying around in the open. JARVIS knows better than to talk to him when anyone could possibly overhear them; his suits are locked in the basement he built when he bought the place, inaccessible to anyone other than himself, Pep, and Rhodey; and there’s nothing but his DNA to tie who he is now to his old life. Hell, the only reason he hasn’t gone in and obliterated any record of Anthony Stark’s genetic makeup is because he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of an emergency so bad he has to go back (not that he can imagine what such an emergency might look like, but that doesn’t mean there won’t ever be one).

Exactly four people know who he is. He’s not going to tell anyone, JARVIS _can’t_ tell anyone, and he trusts Rhodey and Pepper more than he trusts himself.

It’s a risk, allowing Steve and Bucky to stay here, but Tony’s as sure as he can be that it’s one he can handle.

Besides, they seem like good company, and when the conversation gets boring he can just tune them out and daydream about being the filling in whatever kind of sandwich they’ve got going on.

It’s all going to be just fine.


	5. Chapter Four

It is not just fine. It is all completely and utterly very much not fine. If fine has an opposite, that is what it is.

The not-fineness doesn’t become apparent immediately; Tony sits long enough to drink his coffee and eat the slice of pie put aside for him by the black-holes-disguised-as-humans (seriously, there’s no other explanation for how they’ve managed to eat so much in so little time), then spends the next few hours eavesdropping on their conversation as he works on figuring out exactly what he needs to order to get the truck happy about running again. Dinner is also smooth and problem-free, with Bucky offering to head down to the diner and pick up food for them all (and demanding the right to pay for it, which is still not a thing that happens to Tony all that often, even though he’s been pretending he’s not a billionaire for years now) and Steve listening earnestly as Tony lays out a selection of movies for them to watch and lists the pros and cons of each one.

They settle on _A New Hope_ (Tony weighed in in favour of _Empire_ , only to discover that neither of them have seen _Star Wars_ , at all, ever, which is a problem Tony obviously has to rectify immediately) and cheeseburgers and fries, only Bucky returns with another pie as well. Steve is clearly thrilled by this development, and looks extremely sceptical when Tony finishes his burger and declines the enormous wedge they’ve put aside for him.

“But it’s so good,” he protests multiple times, sounding more and more confused with every repetition. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“Leave the man alone, Steve,” Bucky says eventually. “Not everyone has a bottomless pit for a stomach. Besides, the less he has, the more there is for us.” This seems to mollify Steve some, since he cuts a smaller piece from the massive slice he was trying to push on Tony and leaves it in the box, splitting the rest in two and putting half on each of his and Bucky’s plates.

“We didn’t have much to eat as kids,” Bucky tells Tony when they’ve finished, like that somehow explains how they’ve both eaten enough to feed a family of four. It’s gotta be a weird once-in-a-blue-moon binge, Tony thinks, because there’s no way anyone can regularly eat that much and look like they do, even if they spend every spare minute at the gym.

So, everything seems to be going as fine as Tony optimistically decided it would. They finish the movie, then start on _Empire_. Tony’s cell buzzes occasionally, but he doesn’t have any programs running that he needs to be monitoring, there’s no one he’s expecting a call from and, honestly, he’s enjoying watching them watch the film too much to bother looking at it.

They make it through to Cloud City before Bucky starts yawning uncontrollably. It’s not all that late, but then Tony doesn’t know what time they set off at, so he’s willing to stop the movie and show them to the guest room he keeps for when Rhodey and Pepper drop by.

As he told them, the room isn’t big, and the double bed is going to be a little cozy with the pair of them in it, but it’s still gotta be more comfortable than the truck-bed, and they both look grateful enough to have it when Tony bids them goodnight and heads to his own room.

It’s only then that he checks his messages, and realises just how not fine things are.

X

“Soooo,” Bucky says quietly. He’s changed from his jeans and tee-shirt into a more subtle version of his Avengers uniform, and is moving weapons from his duffle bag to assorted holsters and pockets.

“ _Soooo_ what?” Steve answers sulkily, still pouting about the fact that Bucky is going to climb out the window and investigate without him, sitting on the bed glaring at his knees rather than looking at Bucky. It’s pretty clear he’s realised Bucky is trying to tease him out of his bad mood, but knowing he’s being played has never done anything to reduce Steve’s curiosity; the dumbass has been walking right into traps since 1943, not because he doesn’t know there’s a trap there but because he wants to find out what happens when he springs it.

Plus, there’s that whole issue where he conflates _enhanced_ with _invulnerable_ , and therefore does really fucking stupid things because the fact that he hasn’t died yet somehow means he’s not going to die next time either.

Still, this is Bucky’s trap, so it’s completely safe, if perhaps not entirely innocent.

“Tony.” Sure enough, this gets Steve’s attention, and Bucky makes absolutely zero effort not to smirk.

“What about him?”

Bucky shrugs. “You like him”

“He seems nice enough, sure,” Steve agrees after a few seconds. Bucky thinks the delay is because he’s still confused, hasn’t figured out where this is going yet, rather than because he’s being deliberately obtuse. “But it’s not like I know him.”

“Attractive, too.”

“Yeah, I guess he’s kinda nice-looking, but I-” His expression gets sharper, head tilting slightly to the right as he gives Bucky what is very definitely a _look_. “Are you saying _you’re_ attracted to him?”

“What? No,” Bucky dismisses, the question throwing him off-kilter for a moment. “C’mon, Stevie, you know that’s not how it works anymore.”

“Yeah, okay,” Steve agrees softly, maybe a little apologetically; Bucky wonders if he’s remembering how things used to be, way back when Bucky used to want people, used to see a pretty dame or a handsome fella and think _ooh, I wonder if they’d be interested_. Everything still works absolutely fine, Bucky’s still perfectly happy to flirt with everyone who crosses his path, and he enjoys being with Steve now every bit as much as he always has, but he doesn’t feel desire the way he used to.

He likes being touched, but he doesn’t feel the need to seek it out anymore, doesn’t know that he ever will.

“So, what are you saying, then?” Steve asks, interrupting Bucky’s musings by prodding him in the thigh with his toes.

Bucky bats his foot away, slipping one final knife into his right boot before straightening up and answering him. “Just that you like him,” he says. “And that it’s okay if you do.”

“It’s o- Buck, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Depends what it is you’re thinking.” Steve frowns, then frowns harder when Bucky grins back at him. “I’m not telling you to jump his bones tonight – unless, you, you know, _want_ to – but you could maybe test the waters, because it looks like the temperature’s gonna be in your favour.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, his expression soft around the edges, almost hurt, and that’s so not the result Bucky was hoping for. He knows Steve was checking out Tony earlier, Bucky himself likes the guy (in as much as he ever likes strangers these days), and it’s not like he’s suggesting they break up or anything. He just… He’s never seen even the slightest sign that Steve isn’t happy with him, with what passes as a relationship for them now, but just because Bucky can’t see any signs it doesn’t mean they aren’t there, and if this is something Steve might want, Bucky doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have it.

Clearly, Steve does, though, and Bucky has no idea how to fix things other than backtracking. “Don’t give me that face, Steve,” he says, perching on the edge of the bed. “I just wanted to distract you from sulking about me investigating alone. You don’t gotta worry about it.”

“Bucky,” Steve says again, even softer, and that’s when Bucky figures it out. Steve isn’t hurting because of Bucky, he’s hurting _for_ him, like he thinks this is some dumb sacrifice Bucky’s making for him. “I told you ages ago, Buck,” he continues, shifting like he’s about to stand up and hobble over to him, and never mind the fact that Bucky literally carried him upstairs while Tony was busy clearing up their dishes from dinner. “If you don’t want something, I don’t want it.”

Bucky gets to the head of the bed in time to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, pressing down firmly until he quits trying to get up. “Yeah, okay,” he says, pressing a quick, lip-smacking kiss to the dumbass’s forehead. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Just stay there, read a book or something, and for God’s sake don’t do anything to fuck your leg up worse than it already is, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve answers, reaching up to squeeze Bucky’s hand. “Be careful.”

Bucky pats his shoulder, plants another kiss on his forehead, and makes for the window, hoping to God Steve actually decides to listen to him for once.

X

“I’m sorry, Pep,” Tony says, the moment she picks up. “I had- there’s a thing, I couldn’t answer the phone, but I’m here now, though.”

“A thing,” Pepper echoes, her tone practically oozing judgement at him. “I’m here juggling a major crisis at your company, but it’s fine, you have a thing.”

“It’s not my company anymore,” he answers, but he’s already lining his eyes up with the retinal scanner that’s the first step to opening the door at the back of his garage. He’s designed it to like an emergency exit from the inside, and there actually is a door in the corresponding place on the outside, but there’s maybe also a fake wall hiding a narrow space and a steep set of stairs leading down into Tony’s super-secret basement between them, not that the building inspector or anyone else needs to know about that. He follows up the retinal scans with a palm print and a sixteen digit alphanumeric code, then closes and locks the door behind him, the call switching from his cell to JARVIS’s speakers as he heads underground. “All major crises are officially not my problem these days.”

“Even if I’ve identified another one of Stane’s weapons caches?” Pepper asks rhetorically; she’ll have heard both the joke in Tony’s tone and the shift to speakers, so she no doubt already knows he’s getting ready to deal with the problem. “And by _I’ve identified_ , what I mean is _a woman has located and looted one of Stane’s caches and is selling them to the highest bidder_.”

“Shit,” Tony says, which about sums it up. “I thought we’d got all of those.”

Pepper sighs, clearly just as thrilled with the situation as Tony is. “If we’re lucky, this is the last of them.”

_God, I miss feeling lucky_ , Tony thinks. “Open her up, J,” he instructs, waving his hand at the case containing his armour. “You got a location for me, Pep?”

“Already sent,” she answers, just a hint of relief to it.

“I have already taken the liberty of setting it as your destination, Sir,” JARVIS adds, as the glass casing around the suit splits down the middle and parts. “Your route is clear of any recorded flight plans, and you should be there within the hour. If you would step forward…”

Tony does so, raising his arms and standing with his feet shoulder-width apart so that the armour can envelop him, then spares a few seconds to check everything looks and feels right before pulling up a map on the HUD and taking a look at where it is he’s going.

An hour there, an hour home, maybe that long while he’s there, and he’ll be back before his guests realise he’s gone.

“Okay,” he says, watching the hatch in the ceiling pull back to reveal the overcast sky above him. “I’m on my way, Pep. Where am I bringing the stuff to?”

“Between your murder and the arms dealing, Stane’s going to die behind bars. There’s no sense in dragging the company into yet more scandal, particularly not one that links us to Iron Man.”

“Blow it all up?” Tony asks eagerly, because a person who’s tired of explosions is tired of life, and Tony might be legally dead but he is still very much in favour of blowing things up.

“Every single weapon,” Pepper approves. “Have fun, dear.”

“I intend to,” Tony says. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

He ends the call without waiting for a reply, then launches himself into the sky.

X

It’s just shy of two hours since Bucky left Steve alone in Tony’s guest bedroom, and so far he’s found exactly what he thought he would. Namely, diddly goddamn squat, with a healthy side dish of absolutely fuck all.

Seriously, this town has to be the dullest place Bucky has ever been, and he officially died before the vast majority of people had a television set at home. He knows boredom, and this town is boring as fuck. His thorough investigation of the place hasn’t even found any buildings with hidden security cameras, just a couple with motion detector lights (which he navigates successfully, as if that’s even a question) and a single house with one of those ridiculous doorbell cameras.

The most interesting thing in this town is the crazy person who lets two complete strangers with a shitty truck stay in their house and doesn’t ask anywhere near enough questions, and if he was Iron Man, Bucky’s pretty sure he and Steve would have noticed something suspicious about his place. There’s fuck all to find here; Iron Man flying through the dead zone must have futzed with the tracker (fucking HammerTech), and now Bucky is going to go back to Tony’s place, scale the drainpipe, and curl up to sleep next to his idiot of a partner.

Of course, as soon as he decides this, Iron Man flies overhead.


	6. Chapter Five

Bucky isn’t back yet.

He’s only been gone a little over two hours, and he wasn’t particularly precise with a return time, so Steve shouldn’t be worrying yet. And he isn’t, not really.

Except it’s a tiny town, and Bucky already checked it out briefly this afternoon. It really shouldn’t be taking him this long to take a more thorough look around, unless he’s actually breaking into places that he thinks look suspicious, and Steve wants to believe Bucky would have come back to talk to him before doing anything like that.

Unless he found something, and the opportunity to investigate it was too time-sensitive for him to check in.

Unless something found him.

Maybe Steve’s worrying a little bit.

If they were home, in the city, outside of this stupid deadzone, he could just send Bucky a message and get a reassuring reply; hell, he wouldn’t even need to message, because Bucky would have messaged him first to let him know what was going on. Or if Bucky didn’t contact him, and didn’t answer when Steve reached out to him, _and_ it was more than an hour after Bucky was supposed to be back, Steve could force SHIELD’s facial recognition software into scanning the area Bucky was supposed to be, just for reassurance.

He could find Bucky on the vast network of cameras that exist everywhere in the city, and if that didn’t work, if Bucky was on an actually dangerous mission (which this isn’t) and had missed his scheduled check-in time (which he hasn’t, not really), Steve could use the Avengers’ computer systems to access the tracker built in to Bucky’s new arm as a condition of his freedom after he was deprogrammed. Bucky had shrugged and submitted with good grace to the procedure, while Steve had raged when SHIELD and the US government insisted on chipping Bucky like he was a dog with a propensity for escapology before letting him see the sun again, and he’s sure as shit never going to use it unless it’s absolutely the only option, so it’s not at all relevant here but-

But Bucky should be back by now, and Steve is _worried_.

He’s overreacting, he knows that. Bucky fights hard enough to give Nat a run for her money, so there’s no chance anyone in this tiny town could get close to taking him. There’s nothing to be concerned about.

Only, there’s the things Bucky was saying before he left. Steve doesn’t need to worry about Bucky getting injured, definitely not so badly injured he can’t make his way back to Steve, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be worried about the fact that Bucky isn’t back yet.

He knows Bucky still doesn’t feel comfortable with his apathy towards sex since he got his memories back. It seems to change from one day to the next whether he’s more worried that it means there’s something seriously wrong with him or scared that Steve is going to get fed up with him and start looking for someone else. Steve and – after Bucky confided in her a few months later, when things didn’t change – Natasha have both guided him towards multiple resources that say not feeling sexual attraction is absolutely fine, just a part of who someone is, but Steve understands that knowing that might not be enough to make him believe it and, anyway, the other concern is far more pressing.

If there was anything Steve could say to convince Bucky he doesn’t care, he’d say it, and he’d do anything too. He’s loved Bucky for almost a century (because, yes, his time in the ice counts), and a little thing like Bucky rarely wanting to do more than kiss isn’t ever going to change that; Steve is more than content with having Bucky at his side when he goes into battle and curls up to sleep at night, and when his body decides it wants more Steve has two hands and an excellent shower.

He looks, sometimes. At Bucky, at other people, and sometimes he’s interested, but he’s never going to act on that interest. And, yes, Bucky caught him checking out Tony, but Steve is an adult, he can look without touching, doesn’t even want to touch if Bucky doesn’t want to touch too.

Steve would rather sleep with Bucky, just sleep, than have sex with Tony – or anyone else, not that the question of any other specific person has come up yet – without Bucky wanting to be there too.

But Bucky isn’t back yet, and Steve can’t rule out the possibility that Bucky is staying out late because he thinks Steve might actually take him up on his suggestion.

God, Steve wishes he was back already.

X

Bucky jams the car down a gear, cursing under his breath. Yeah, the town is tiny, and clearly most of the occupants aren’t much above the breadline, but there have to be better cars he could have stolen, ones that don’t make that godawful noise when Bucky brakes too sharply or feel like they’re going to topple over when he takes a corner too fast. And that’s without even mentioning the fact that it tops out at seventy-five and is really fucking unhappy about Bucky trying to make it go faster than that.

On a slightly more positive note, by the time Bucky gets about ten miles out of town the tracker comes back online. As a result, Bucky can follow Iron Man long past the point where he’s lost sight of him, even if he’s doing so a hell of a lot slower than he’d like, and it also as good as confirms that their vigilante-ally (in some fights, at least) has his base in the deadzone.

Bucky’s been driving almost an hour when Iron Man’s tracker stops moving, a good fifty miles away as the crow flies (which is obviously not the route Bucky is taking, given the crap-pile he ‘borrowed’ can barely manage the actual road he’s on). He’s got no idea how long it’ll take him to get there, even less idea whether Iron Man will still be around when he does, and Bucky knows the sensible thing would be to give up, drive back to town and return the car to where he found it, and tuck himself into bed at Steve’s side.

On the other hand, Bucky knows where Iron Man is and where he most probably is going to be in the near future, which is an excellent opportunity to set a trap.

X

Tony has left the beautiful remains of a very large explosion behind and is most of the way home when he sees a beaten up car on the side of the road, the hood up and a hunched figure digging around in its insides.

Obviously, Tony offers his help. He’s a mechanic; that’s what he does.

Well, no. First he flies right on past the guy and his crap-pile, because he spends enough time fixing cars for his day job and he’s left strangers alone in his home; yeah, okay, JARVIS won’t let them go anyplace they shouldn’t be going, but that doesn’t mean it’s not weird and uncomfortable, a violation of his space. Tony tolerated it because it really was an emergency, but the emergency is handled now, so he needs to get home, and…

And this breakdown might not be an emergency to him, but it probably is to the driver, and sparing five minutes to help out isn’t exactly going to make things at home any worse.

Sighing to himself, Tony doubles back, hovering overhead a moment before slowly lowering himself to the ground.

“You need a hand?” he asks, the suit effectively cutting out any identifying vocalisations, not that he’s expecting someone he’s found broken down on the side of the road to be able to recognise his voice without it.

“Yeah, you any good with engines?” the figure answers, not looking up or even remotely acknowledging the fact that he’s talking to a superhero/villain (depending on the day of the week and the person passing judgement on him). Tony doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“I’ve handled a spanner or two,” he says anyway, walking towards the vehicle. The figure moves to one side to let him see inside the car, still shadowed by the open hood. “Any idea what the problem is?”

The man shrugs, still acting like the fact that Iron Man is offering to fix his car isn’t worth noticing which, yeah, Tony thinks that alone deserves an interrogation, but one problem at a time.

He pops out the miniature toolkit from the hidden compartment on his right thigh (almost exactly where one might expect to find a pocket, if he was wearing jeans), leans forwards to get a look at the engine, and then freezes.

There’s a gun pressed to the front of his armour, barrel up against the arc reactor.

“If you didn’t want help, you could have just said _no thank you_ ,” Tony says lightly, turning to look at the man next to him, suspecting from the blue lights on the weapon that he already knows who he’s going to see.

Sure enough, he’s staring right into the dark goggles of the Winter Soldier, who just so happens to have a very formidable EMP weapon armed and ready to shoot Tony.

Fuck, Tony hopes his efforts to build in protections against shit like that are good enough.

“You’re thinking of Cap,” the Soldier tells him, his voice every bit as expressionless as his thoroughly concealed face. “He’s the one who never wants your help.”

“And you’re the one who follows me out into the backside of nowhere,” Tony says. “Completely different, clearly.” He waits a moment for the Soldier to deny he’s following him, even though he obviously is, but continues eventually when the other man remains silent. “What made you think I was going to stop, anyway?”

The Soldier shrugs, the gun somehow not shifting at all as he does so. “Figured it was worth a shot. Wasn’t gonna catch you in this shitheap, anyway, not like trying it was gonna cost me anything.”

Tony casts his gaze over the car again, taking in the scuffed paint, the rust patches, the worn tread on the front right tyre, the fact that although the Soldier clearly pulled over rather than broke down the engine still doesn’t look too good anyway. There’s one of these in town somewhere, Tony’s worked on it more than once, picked it up and dropped it off again for the owner, and he can safely say there’s no way in hell the Soldier would be able to keep up with him if he hadn’t stopped.

And, for that matter, “How did you know where to find me?”

He might not be able to see the Soldier’s face, but Tony’s pretty sure the bastard is smirking as he says, “I’m the Winter Soldier, pal. Can’t go giving away all my secrets.”

Tony’s answering smile is equally well-hidden, thankfully. “And I’m guessing asking where your worse half is will get the exact same answer?”

“My _what_?”

“Captain America?” Tony explains. “You know, like better half, except with the stick up his ass he’s no fun at all, so you’re his better half, obviously. Gonna tell me where he is?”

“Not here,” the Soldier answers. “Why are you here?”

He’s not the only one who can provide honest but utterly unhelpful answers, Tony thinks, amused. “Because I thought you were a civilian in need of assistance and I’m a good samaritan?”

This startles a laugh out of the Soldier, the sound sparking something in the back of Tony’s brain, but the Soldier continues his interrogation before he can figure out what. “And before that…?”

“Just passing through,” Tony says. “On the way from A to B, you know how it goes.”

“Sure,” the Soldier agrees. “Where’s point B?”

“America. As was point A, for that matter. How’s your boyfriend’s leg doing?”

It’s just another question, something to keep the Soldier occupied and not shooting him while he figures out a way out of here, which is why he’s very much not expecting the Soldier’s actual response.

“Goddamn dumbass cut his cast off at the first fucking opportunity,” he snarls, then proceeds to launch into a rant about Captain America’s idiocy so laden with expletives that Tony is almost too busy gaping at him to notice when the EMP gun drifts away from his chest.

Almost.


	7. Chapter Six

_Oh fuck_ , Tony thinks as he shoves the Winter Soldier back and rockets away from him at top speed, needing to be out of range before he recovers enough to take a shot at him. Yeah, he’s relatively sure his anti-EMP tech is going to keep him safe, but he has absolutely no desire to test it for the first time against something that wasn’t his design while he’s flying through the middle of nowhere.

The Avengers have found him.

He managed to put a brave face on it when he was in front of the Soldier, pretending he wasn’t in the least bit concerned, but Tony put a hell of a lot of effort into faking his death and erasing any trace of a link between Iron Man, Anthony Stark, and Tony Edwards. And, sure, Tony has contingency plans in place for if he gets found out, but those worlds are separate, safe, and if the Avengers have found him out here, far too close to his home, if they’ve tracked him down-

If they’ve _tracked_ him.

“JARVIS, scan the suit! Scan it now!” Tony banks hard, veering off to the left, away from home, because if the Avengers are tracking him, if the Winter Soldier managed to hit him with something when Tony fought the Zoomaton with them… _Fuck_.

No, it’s okay. His manufactured deadzone clearly holds up, otherwise the Avengers would have been on his doorstep already, dragging off Tony Edwards for the crimes of Iron Man, ripping apart his home, taking him away from Pepper and Rhodey and-

“Scans completed, Sir,” JARVIS tells him. “There is a tracking device on your right shoulder. HammerTech, if I’m not mistaken. I believe electrifying the exterior of your armour should successfully disable it.”

“Do it!” Tony instructs, and feels the momentary decrease in his speed as JARVIS obeys.

“It is done, Sir,” JARVIS tells him a few seconds later. “I can confirm the device is no longer active.”

Tony doesn’t relax, because an Avenger has just found him far too close to his home and they’ve been tracking him from the moment he left New York to the moment he entered the deadzone. They’ll have seen him blink out of existence and then reappear in approximately the same place, will have tracked him to the weapons cache he blew up for Pepper, will know that the armour stayed in the deadzone even if they have no real way of knowing if its owner did as well.

He’s trying very hard not to panic as he instructs JARVIS to call Rhodey, but he’s not doing anywhere near as well as he’d like to.

“I know you promised to call me back, but you couldn’t have done it while it was still light out?” is Rhodey’s version of a greeting, which, okay, Tony is an inconsiderate bastard, clearly, but this has to be more important than that.

“They’ve found me,” Tony tells him, and oh, shit, is he really that high-pitched right now?

Apparently it is, and apparently that’s a good thing at this and only this moment in time, because Rhodey’s voice is a lot more urgent when he speaks next. “Who, Tony?”

“The Avengers. They’ve found me.”

“Shit.” The word comes out as a long, drawn out exhale. “Are you okay, Tones? Do I need to come down there?” And then, before Tony can refuse, demand that Rhodey stay as far away as possible so that he doesn’t get dragged down with Tony, he continues with, “Hang on, have you been arrested? Is this your one phone call?”

Tony’s panic is clearly bordering on hysteria, because he can’t help laughing at Rhodey’s words and the fact that he actually sounds more worried than Tony feels. “Careful, Rhodeybear, you’re starting to sound like Pep there.”

“Reasonable?” Rhodey offers. “Rational? _Right_?”

“Panicky.” Rhodey just scoffs at that, almost certainly rolling his eyes, and Tony realises just how very much that’s not the point. “And, anyway, do you really think I’d get a phone call if they caught me?”

“So they haven’t caught you, then?”

“Oh, please, like they _could_ ,” Tony answers, because his meeting with the Soldier might have been concerning, and the fact that the Avengers have his home location down to somewhere within a 25 mile radius is even more so, but that fact still stands. As long as he has the opportunity to take off, there’s no way in hell that band of government-sponsored do-gooders could actually get their hands on him.

“But you said…?”

“They haven’t _found me_ found me,” Tony says. “They’re just- in the area, and it’s not like there’s much area here for them to be in, you know? Excuse me for freaking out a bit.” He chooses to ignore Rhodey’s cough, and the fact that it sounds weirdly like _a bit_. “I just thought, if I disappear off the face of the earth, you should know whose door you and Pep need to be kicking down.”

“The _Avengers_ aren’t going to disappear you, Tony,” Rhodey tells him, back to sounding exasperated again. “Arrest you, maybe, if you’ve really pissed them off recently, but these are the good guys.”

“You haven’t met them,” Tony says, and even he can’t deny he sounds slightly sulky as he says it. “Captain America would just _love_ to make me go away.”

Rhodey sighs. “You saved the guy’s life this week, Tony, or at the very least saved his leg. You gotta chill out about this.”

“Yeah, because you were so chilled a mome….” Tony trails off, because somehow the mention of Cap’s leg now has lit up connections it didn’t when he was talking to the Soldier.

The Winter Soldier, who he met about fifty miles from his home. Who knew where Tony was going to be well enough to fake a breakdown on his route, and who probably couldn’t have got there from the city in the time between Tony leaving home and heading back there, and sure as hell couldn’t have got there in the slightly scruffy car of a make, model and colour that Tony specifically remembers working on at his garage. Whose laugh sparked something in the back of Tony’s brain, who ranted about Cap’s injury the same way Bucky did about Steve’s, who even started to to call Cap a name beginning with _St_ after the fight with the Zoomaton, and for a genius Tony can’t half be stupid sometimes.

Honestly, just the fact that neither of them has seen _Star Wars_ before should probably have been enough to clue him in.

“Hey, Rhodey, I gotta call you back,” Tony says, hanging up before Rhodey can reply, and it’s the second time he’s promised Rhodey that today, but priorities, and even Rhodey would have to agree inviting fucking Captain America and the goddamn Winter Soldier to stay in his home takes precedence.


	8. Chapter Seven

It’s gone three in the morning by the time Steve finally detects the sound of Bucky scaling the drainpipe, and he’s up on his half-healed leg and hauling the window open the second he does.

“What the hell time do you call this?” he hisses, because he heard Tony moving around in his bedroom a couple of hours ago and he doesn’t want to take the chance it’s bad sound-proofing rather than his enhanced hearing. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

Bucky swings himself from the drainpipe and through the window, landing soundlessly in a crouch, then straightens up and permits Steve to pull him into a hug.

Steve buries his face in his neck, hiding in the curtain of his hair, and just breathes for a moment. Bucky’s arms come up to hold him in return, and he’s warm and solid and smells like he always does, of gun oil, steel and his usual, near-scentless shampoo, overlaid with the sharpness of gasoline (no smoke, though, so he’s not used it to burn evidence or anything else, which is always a plus).

“Hey,” Bucky murmurs, pressing his hand to the back of Steve’s head; Steve tries very hard to calm his heartbeat and his breathing, knowing that Bucky is every bit as able to hear it as he is. “I’m back, I’m fine. Just breathe, okay, pal?”

Steve lets Bucky walk them to the foot of the bed and sits down, still holding him close, and it’s ridiculous, he knows that. Bucky is the most competent person he knows, except maybe for Nat, so of course he was going to be okay, was going to come back absolutely fine and prove that all of Steve’s worrying was for nothing, so there’s absolutely no reason for Steve to be so utterly relieved to have him back safe and sound.

“Okay,” he manages, pulling back a little, far enough that he can see Bucky’s face, dropping his arms from around Bucky’s waist and shoulders and taking hold of his hand instead. “I’m okay. You better have a damn good story, though.”

X

“You just let him go?” Steve says, when Bucky’s finished recounting his fun evening activities (including an equally enjoyable phone call to Natalia before he re-entered the deadzone to update her on their temporary living arrangements, and there’s no way in hell he’s telling Steve she said exactly the same thing he just has when Bucky told her what happened).

Now, Bucky isn’t exactly proud of how easily he let Iron Man distract him, but it’s absolutely Steve’s fault that it happened. If his partner wasn’t such a colossal dumbass when it comes to his own health, Bucky wouldn’t have been so distracted bitching about him to the first person willing to listen (because the only other people he spends time with are the team, who are all just as lacking in self-preservation as Steve is and therefore can’t agree with Bucky’s complaints without being complete and utter hypocrites) that the vigilante was able to get away.

“I didn’t _let him go_ ,” he argues. “He distracted me, and I coulda shot him down but, one, we don’t know if our EMP weapons’ll work against his armour and, two, even if they did work, he was too high up by the time I woulda got a shot off. Whole point in having non-lethal shit is to, you know, _not kill people_.”

Even a stubborn asshole like Steve has to concede Bucky’s point there, though his expression makes it pretty damn clear he’s not happy about it. “Yeah, fine,” he grumbles, then flashes Bucky a grin. “Good job on not killing anyone today, jerk.”

Bucky bashes his shoulder against Steve’s (entirely accidentally, of course), then dodges his return blow by leaning over to untie his shoelaces. His boots are innocuous enough to get kicked into the corner, and then Bucky stands up, stripping out of the parts of his uniform too uncomfortable to sleep in and putting them away in his kitbag again. Most of his weapons join them, apart from the 9mm that lives under his pillow and the knife he keeps tucked between the mattress and headboard.

By the time he’s done, Steve has wriggled his way up to the head of the bed and is under the covers, holding one corner up for Bucky to curl up next to him.

“Sorry I worried you,” he murmurs, back to Steve, because apologies are always easier when the lights are out and he doesn’t have to make eye contact. “Particularly since it didn’t do any good. We’ve lost the tracker I had on Iron Man, and we don’t know anything more than we did yesterday.”

Steve rests his forehead on the back of Bucky’s neck. “I don’t know about that,” he says, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s spine. “The tracker came back online when Iron Man left the deadzone, so we know that it’s not just that flying over here killed the signal and he carried on after that, and this is the only town in the area. Chances are, he’s here somewhere. We just have to look harder.”

_Look harder where?_ Bucky thinks, because the town might be the only one in the deadzone but it’s not exactly huge, so unless he starts breaking into people’s homes looking for secret rooms there’s not a whole lot of places left to look. “Mmm,” he says noncommittally, since that is very much tomorrow's problem.

There’s silence for a few minutes, and then Steve puts a bit more space between them, rolling onto his back. “We need to get better weapons,” he says.

Bucky rolls over too, propping himself up on his elbow so that he can look at Steve’s face. “What’s that?”

“Weapons,” Steve repeats, because obviously that’s what Bucky was querying. “If you don’t think our EMPs would be enough to take him down, then we need better ones.”

Bucky laughs. “Steve, shit like that hasn’t advanced since Stark Industries got out of the weapons industry when their brain guy pegged it. We’ve already got the best available.”

“But… If Iron Man is better…?”

“Yeah. Guy’s a genius, no question of that.”

Steve finds his hand again, bringing it up to rest on his chest, right above his heart, then covers it with his own. Bucky lets himself drop back into the mattress, head on Steve’s shoulder, figuring that’s the end of it, time for him to get some very well-earned rest, and then Steve speaks again. “Guess that’s why we want him on side, then,” he murmurs. “No sense pushing him into supervillainy if we can help it.”

_And finally the penny drops_ , Bucky thinks, smiling to himself, feeling Steve’s heartbeat under his palm, the soft skin of his shoulder under his lips. “No sense at all,” he murmurs. “Now go to sleep, Stevie.”

For once in his life, Steve seems to decide to do what he’s told.

X

Tony was very much not comfortable about going back home last night (well, this morning, but Pepper’s not here so no one’s counting), but since Howard died he’s done his very best not to give up anything that’s his, and the garage? That is absolutely, completely, 100% Tony’s, and he is _not_ letting his dad’s science project chase him out of the life he’s built for himself here.

And so home Tony had gone, giving JARVIS firm instructions to keep an eye on his guests (in as much as his cameras and microphones allow for, given that Pepper was very firm about refusing to come visit him if he wouldn’t guarantee at least the guest room and bathrooms be entirely surveillance free) and then going to bed behind a very locked door. He didn’t exactly sleep well, despite his best efforts, though that does have the upside of him being awake when JARVIS sends a message to his phone warning him that Captain America and the Winter Soldier are both awake and out of the room Tony loaned them.

It’s not even eight in the morning yet. Like Tony needed any more proof that they’re not really human.

Tony stumbles back into his jeans and tee-shirt from yesterday, slides on his watch-gaunlet just in case push comes to shove and he has to start shooting, and heads to the kitchen, where he finds both Steve and a full coffee pot.

Bucky, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen, and Tony is immediately on edge.

_Don’t ask about him_ , Tony tells himself firmly. _For all you know, he could still be upstairs asleep. They don’t have any reason to suspect you, and you damn well better not give them one_.

“Morning,” Steve says cheerfully, smiling at Tony in a way that is about fifty times more genuine than anything he’s ever given Iron Man, even when he carried him from a battlefield to receive timely medical attention. “I put the coffee on, I hope that’s okay.”

“Hey, any coffee I don’t have to make for myself is more than okay,” Tony answers, doing his best to smile back at him. “Not sure what food I’ve got, but you’re welcome to anything you can find.”

Steve heads for the fridge as casually as anything, like it’s his rather than Tony’s, and digs out a box of eggs Tony didn’t know he had and a carton of milk that, judging by his approving look at the date sticker, might actually still be safe to drink. “I can make us French toast, if you’ve got bread and a skillet?”

Tony directs him to the correct cupboards, pretending there’s absolutely nothing weird about Captain America offering to cook him breakfast. Hell, even if he didn’t know the man’s secret identity, Tony understands enough of basic host protocol to know he shouldn’t be letting his guest cook for him, so he reluctantly walks over to the sink and scrubs up.

“It’s my place, I can’t let you do all the work,” he explains when Steve looks askance at him. “What can I do?”

Steve in the kitchen gives instructions exactly the same way as he does on the battlefield, and Tony has to fight back his instinctive, bristling refusal. Instead, he dredges up a smile and beats together the ingredients he’s told to, waiting until the first slice of bread is in the pan before deciding it’s been long enough for him to ask, “Bucky still asleep? Want me to go up and wake him, save your leg?”

There’s a pause as Steve looks down at his leg, seems to realise even if it’s just a sprain rather than the break Tony knows it actually was ( _goddamn dumbass cut his cast off at the first opportunity_ , he remembers, and it’s like they’re not even trying to maintain a secret identity, either of them) it’s still unlikely he’d be healed up so quickly given how bad he was limping yesterday, and then says, “Um, he went for a run?”

_You asking me or telling me?_ Tony thinks, because Steve’s voice went up almost half an octave at the end; Tony’s relationship with the Avengers is at best antagonistic allies and at worst going to end with them throwing him in a deep dark pit and erasing any trace of his existence, but at least he knows Captain America isn’t going to successfully lie to him anytime soon. “Ugh,” he says, feigning a shudder the way he would if he actually believed Bucky was spending his morning running rather than investigating Tony’s friends and neighbours.

“Not a morning person, I’m guessing,” Steve says, flashing him a smile.

“Not even a little bit,” Tony answers, and is saved from further conversation (and Captain America’s judgemental expression) when his phone rings.

X

“I told him you went for a run,” Steve murmurs, quiet enough that Tony, still on the phone in the other room, won’t be able to hear him.

Bucky looks down at himself, dressed in jeans, a tee-shirt, his leather jacket, and his boots, then back at Steve, not saying anything, but then Steve doesn’t really need him to. Nothing about his outfit (or his demeanor, for that matter) suggests he was out running. “I know, I know,” he says. “I was on the spot. He asked if you were still asleep, and offered to go wake you up so that I didn’t have to go upstairs on my leg. That was the first thing I thought of.”

This gets him an eyeroll, then a sigh. “You’re burning breakfast,” Bucky tells him, waiting until Steve turns back to the stove before patting him on the ass. “I’m back, Tony,” he calls into the other room, putting a hitch in his breathing that makes it sound like he actually has been exercising. “Going for a shower, don’t eat all of Steve’s cooking before I’m done. Wouldn’t want you taking advantage of all his hard word”

It’s not so much Bucky’s words as it is the way in which he says them that has Steve choking on absolutely nothing, cheeks flaring hot enough that he’s glad to be alone in the room.

X

By the time Bucky comes downstairs after his completely unnecessary and therefore fairly quick shower, the table has been laid and Steve is casting perturbed glances from the plate piled with French toast (Clint’s recipe, if Bucky’s nose doesn’t deceive him) to the door to the living room.

Being far more prone to taking the initiative in social situations that Steve is, Bucky ignores the idiot’s indecision and heads straight over there, tapping twice on the door before nudging it open. “Food’s done,” he says, waiting until Tony acknowledges him before retreating back to the kitchen.

The other man joins them before Bucky has finished his first serving, pouring himself another ridiculously large cup of coffee, then bringing it and the coffee pot over to the table when he sits down.

“So that was Mr Downham,” he says, as opposed to anything normal like _good morning_ or _how was your run?_

Bucky looks at Steve, just in case this makes any more sense to him, but judging by Steve’s tiny half-shrug he’s just as confused. “Okay?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah, nice guy, lives up on Main Street,” Tony continues, because, yeah, obviously Bucky was asking for a random guy’s address rather than wondering why the hell Tony is telling them about his phone call. “So, anyway, he said he went out this morning, and his car wasn’t where he left it. Weird, right?”

_It’s fine_ , Bucky tells himself. _You wiped your prints, and checked for hair; hell, you even filled the tank before you returned it. Even if the owner does call the cops and manage to convince them a crime took place, there’s nothing to link it to you._

Steve clearly hasn’t picked up on what’s going on yet, because he doesn’t so much as glance at Bucky before saying, “His car was stolen? Why did he call you?”

Tony smiles, shaking his head. “That’s the weird thing. It was still _there_ , it just wasn’t where he left it. He said there wasn’t a space outside his house when he got home last night, so he ended up parked three houses down, but this morning, there it was, right on his doorstep.”

Bucky curses himself mentally. Sure, he was rushing after Iron Man when he took the car, maybe didn’t take as good a look at the place he was jacking it from, but he could have sworn he parked it closer to where it came from than that.

He knows Steve is looking at him now, that he’s no doubt doing his best and completely unsubtle disappointed face. Acknowledging him isn’t going to do any good, though, so Bucky makes sure to meet Tony’s gaze as he asks, “And Mr Downs is sure he didn’t just get confused?”

“Downham,” Tony corrects. “And nope. He swears to God it moved overnight. Wanted to know if there was some mechanical fault that could make that happen.”

Bucky laughs, because his skills with an engine might be seventy years out of date and mostly learnt on the battlefront, but vehicles didn’t work like that in his day and he’s pretty sure that hasn’t changed.

“Much more likely he just left the parking brake off,” he says.

“That’s exactly what I said,” Tony agrees, laughing too, and Bucky relaxes, finally; clearly, Tony thinks this is just a funny story he can relay to his guests, not something he needs to be worrying about.

When he looks over at Steve, Bucky’s surprised to see he’s still frowning.


	9. Chapter Eight

Bucky heads back out after they’ve finished eating, this time taking on the responsibility of lying about his activities for himself, and doing a far better job of it than Steve did. It’s hardly surprising, because Bucky has always been a lot better at lying their way out of difficult situations, but when Bucky pulls out a notepad and a chewed up ballpoint pen and announces that he’s going to spend the day writing at the diner and won’t be back until evening, he’s so convincing about it even Steve wants to believe him.

“That’s cool,” Tony says, smiling in a way that sits weirdly in Steve’s mind, like it’s just a bit too innocent to be sincere. “What’re you working on?”

“Romance novel,” Bucky tells him, smirking.

“Yeah?”

“Pirates, handsome rogues, steamy adventure on the high seas.” That smug grin is still on Bucky’s face, like he’s thrilled to have someone actually ask him to back up his lie (because he and Nat always get way to into it, coming up with backstory upon backstory to support their alternative identities, and then they get disappointed when no one they’re using them on ever cares enough to ask for more info. Or Bucky does, anyway; Steve has yet to replicate Clint’s impressive ability to read Nat’s facial expressions well enough to be sure how she feels about it). “I’ll send you a copy when it’s finished.”

“Looking forward to it.” Tony grins, and doesn’t even pretend to avert his eyes when Bucky kisses Steve goodbye.

And then Bucky is gone, and Steve has the whole day ahead of him to figure out why everything that’s happened this morning strikes him as weird.

X

The Winter Soldier, despite his surprisingly robust cover story (Tony doesn’t know if the idea of Hydra’s feared assassin spending his time writing nautical romance is terrifying or hilarious, but it’s one hell of a mental image either way), is obviously out snooping for clues, and Tony sort of expects Captain America is going to spend the day resting his leg on the sofa, reading or watching TV or grumbling at his phone for not working.

Captain America apparently has other ideas, because when Tony heads through the door linking the kitchen to his garage, Steve follows him, hardly any trace of a limp to his movements now.

Given that he’s not even going to think about his basement workshop until his home is completely free of superheroes, it’s not really a problem. Hell, it might even be an advantage, because while Steve apparently feels the need to pick up and examine anything that isn’t fastened down, it does at least mean he’s within Tony’s line of sight at all times.

Between that and the fact that JARVIS has tapped into every security camera in town and is sending regular messages to Tony’s phone updating him on the Soldier’s whereabouts, he’s feeling about as zen as he can be about his houseguests.

Which, of course, is when Steve, tossing a quarter inch screw from hand to hand, says, “So, I was wondering, is there anything else weird going on in town?”

Subtle, he is not.

X

“Weird?” Tony asks, a second later than might be expected. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know,” Steve answers. “Cars that move by themselves overnight, cell-phones losing signal as soon as you get within twenty miles, the fact that the town isn’t even on google maps? You know, that kind of weird.”

Tony goes very still for a moment, then puts down whatever mysterious engine parts he’s playing with (Steve’s never pretended to be any good with cars). “Yeah, okay, that maybe counts as weird, if you want to put it that way, but I can’t think of anything else. It’s just a normal small town, you know?”

_A normal small town that just happens to be home to Iron Man,_ Steve thinks. _That sounds likely_.

“Okay,” he says, offering a smile that isn’t anywhere near as bland as his teammates more suited to espionage could manage.

X

One hour passes, then another. Steve finishes poking at Tony’s tools and returns to the chair he sat in yesterday afternoon, pulling a creased sheet of paper from one pocket and a pencil from the other. He crosses his legs, resting the paper on his thigh, and makes every impression of being completely absorbed in sketching something.

Tony assumes it’s just his cover – the Winter Soldier claims to be a romance novelist, while Captain America likes to pretend he can draw – until he uses the opportunity of rummaging in the drawers over on that side of the room for a smaller wrench to sneak a peek.

Steve’s drawing is of Tony’s Mustang, the hood up, engine realistically rendered down to the smallest screw, a slightly more cartoon-ish doodle of Tony leaning over it with a speech-bubble full of pet-names and furious punctuation at his side.

Cap isn’t pretending to be an artist.

“Um,” he says, which is when Tony realises he’s been staring far too long. “Sorry, I probably should have asked before drawing you.”

“No, I love it!” Tony answers, the words flying out much quicker than he intended, though he does at least manage to hold back the _hang on, does this mean the Winter Soldier really can write?_ that wants to follow it. “Can I have it?”

Steve blushes, bashful in a way he never is on the battlefield. “It’s not much, but sure,” he says, not meeting Tony’s gaze as he hands over the drawing, then adds, “This really is a small town.”

“What’s that?” Tony asks, more of his attention on the picture than its artist.

“The town. Isn’t it difficult, living somewhere so small?”

Tony blinks, then takes a moment to remind himself that Cap’s spent a hell of a lot more time in an era where same-sex relationships were illegal than he has in the present. It’s hardly surprising that he’s wary about being out in the city, let alone somewhere without New York’s reputation of acceptance. “Nah, they’re great people, I’ve never had any problems with any of them. If you and your boyfriend want to go for a walk holding hands, no one’ll bat an eyelid.”

“Oh,” Steve says softly, which is when Tony looks at him, sees the pleased little smile on his face, and realises that wasn’t actually the question he was being asked. “That’s good to know, actually, we’re both a bit wary about being affectionate in public, so it’s nice that…” Steve trails off, shaking his head like he’s shaking away the end of his sentence. “But, no, I was actually thinking financially. There can’t be that many people needing their cars fixed – how do you stay in business? If you don’t mind me asking.”

_Right_ , Tony thinks. It’s not Steve, asking about whether it’s a safe place to be open about his and Bucky’s sexuality. It’s Captain America, investigating the town for any evidence of Iron Man’s presence.

“I don’t just do cars,” he explains, though he leaves off the bit where he sends designs to Pepper and she makes sure he still has access to enough Stark Industries money to buy what he needs. “Anything that breaks ‘round here, I’ll have a go at fixing it. And it’s not an expensive place to live, you know? No nightlife, no place to spend all my hard-earned money.”

“Right,” Steve agrees. “Is it a family business?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Tony replies, which isn’t entirely untrue; technically, he still works for the family business, even if his garage isn’t part of it. Then, because he’s had more than enough of being interrogated, glances at his watch and says, “Hey, you know how you cooked breakfast? How are you with lunch?”

X

Given that they’re staying with a complete civilian who seems almost unnaturally invested in showing them George Lucas’ entire oeuvre (they finished what Tony insists are the only _Star Wars_ movies this evening, then made a start on _Indiana Jones_ ), it’s not until Tony has gone to bed that Steve finally gets the opportunity to interrogate Bucky on his investigation. Impatient bastard that he is, he barely gives Bucky the chance to close the door after getting back from brushing his teeth before he starts with the questions.

“Any joy?” he asks, fidgeting in anticipation.

“Couldn’t wait for me to finish getting ready for bed, could you?” Bucky grumbles in response, rolling his eyes when Steve pouts at him, the manipulative little shit. “No, I’ve not found anything yet. At least I’ll have company tomorrow, I guess.”

Steve is uncharacteristically silent, and Bucky looks up from putting away his weapons, wondering at the frown on his face. “I’m guessing you have other plans?”

“Yeah,” Steve answers. “It’s… That conversation at breakfast, about the car. It was weird.”

Bucky blinks at him, then balls up the tee-shirt he’s just removed and throws it at him. “You do get how the car moved, don’t you?” he says, hoping he’s not going to have to actually explain that he returned a stolen car to the wrong parking space. It’s bad enough that he was stupid enough to do it, without having to admit it aloud.

“No, I know that.” Steve rolls his eyes, and for a moment it looks like he’s about to laugh, before the frown comes back. “It was the way Tony told us about it, like he was watching for our reactions, and then when you told him where you were going, he was way too interested.”

“You don’t think he bought it,” Bucky surmises.

Steve shakes his head. “I think he’s got something to do with Iron Man.”

_And it’s not just that you want to stick around because you’ve got a giant boner for him?_ Bucky thinks, giving Steve his blankest expression. “Because…?”

“A feeling,” Steve answers firmly, like he’s under the impression that counts as evidence. “Those conversations, a few questions I asked him today… It just felt off. I’m not saying he _is_ Iron Man, but he’s clearly brilliant, and he says he fixes just about anything that breaks around here, so we know he’s good with technology. I think he could be helping him. At the very least, I think he suspects who we are, and there’s no reason for that if he doesn’t know we’re in town.”

Much as he wants to trust Steve’s instincts (they’re not _often_ wrong, at least), Bucky still isn’t buying it. Steve wants to spend time with Tony, but can’t admit to himself that that’s what he wants because he’s repressed and ridiculous and doesn’t get that Bucky really is okay with it, so he’s coming up with reasons he can more easily accept; yeah, there’s no logical reason for someone to suspect his and Steve’s other identities without knowing the Winter Soldier is in the area, but Bucky isn’t convinced Tony does suspect them.

“Let’s say I think you’re right,” he says. “Maybe he just happened to look out the window at the same time as I got back?”

“Really, Buck?” Steve scoffs. “If you thought there was even a chance someone had seen you, you’d have taken off and sent one of the others to collect me later. You’re not sloppy enough to get caught.”

“Thanks, pal,” Bucky answers, because Steve might not be great at self-awareness, but he sure knows Bucky. “But sure,” he adds. “I’ll keep looking out there, and you can snoop around here.”

He knew before he said it that this is definitely not what Steve wanted to hear, but he hadn’t quite anticipated just how much he’d love Steve’s expression.

“I’ll what?” he says, looking like just hearing it is enough to fill him with fear. “Bucky, no, I’m terrible at the stealth thing. He’ll catch me, and then what do I say?”

“Okay, first up, you won’t get caught,” _because Tony most likely has nothing to do with Iron Man, so he won’t think there’s any reason for you to be investigating him_ , he finishes in his head. “Second, if you do get caught, you just do exactly what me or Nat would.”

Steve’s frowning, that dumbass stubbornness he gets when he knows what someone wants him to do and also knows he really doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to ask, and Bucky isn’t going to tell him until he does.

Bucky takes the opportunity of Steve’s silent grumbling to finish getting ready for bed, picking up the book he swiped from Tony’s bookshelves this afternoon and curling up under the covers, ready to read until either he’s tired enough to sleep or Steve’s impressive resolve breaks.

He’s three pages in before Steve’s brewing curiosity finally gets the better of him and he mutters, “And what’s that?”

“Hm?” Bucky says, licking his finger before turning the page. “Oh, easy. You gotta flirt your way out of it, Stevie.”

“I _what_?” Steve splutters, and Bucky glances up from the book in time to see him turn scarlet.

Bucky smiles at him, shuffling over until he can rest his head on Steve’s shoulder. “You landed me and Carter when you were a scrawny little bastard who didn’t know how to stay out of trouble,” he points out, knowing that, despite his words, he sounds every bit as affectionate as he feels. “I think you can score with a charming mechanic looking like you do now.”

Steve grimaces, still sulking. “I hate you,” he mutters.

“Love you too, Stevie,” Bucky tells him, craning his neck far enough to press a kiss to Steve’s jaw (stubborn jackass won’t turn his head far enough for Bucky to reach his mouth), then goes back to his book again.


	10. Chapter Nine

Steve knows Bucky isn’t entirely convinced by his suspicions about Tony, but that’s all the more reason for him to stay here and prove them, and he’s damn well not going to flirt with Tony to do so.

X

Now that Cap’s back on his feet again, walking without any trace of a limp, Tony’s expecting him to head out as well. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, after all, and obviously Bucky hasn’t found any evidence of Iron Man by searching the town, so it only makes sense for the pair of them to continue the investigation, either together or apart. He’s therefore somewhat surprised when Steve comes downstairs for breakfast with bare feet, even though Bucky is already wearing his boots and leather jacket and carrying the possibly-a-ruse possibly-the-draft-of-a-romance-novel notebook.

Steve makes bacon and scrambled eggs this morning, and Tony spends the whole time he’s cooking and they’re eating fighting the urge to sneak a peek at the notebook.

Again, Tony makes exactly zero effort not to watch as Bucky kisses Steve goodbye, which means he’s looking when Bucky pulls back, pecks Steve on the cheek and sends Tony a wink. It’s suggestive and strange and so surprising that Tony almost swallows his own tongue, still gawping when Bucky squeezes a generous handful of Steve’s ass, smirks at both of them, and saunters out the door.

Steve blushes, and completely avoids Tony’s gaze as he closes the door behind Bucky, then begins collecting up their breakfast pots and carrying them over to the sink.

“You know there’s a machine that does that, right?” Tony says, watching as Steve starts to fill the sink with water and bubbles.

“I like doing them by hand,” Steve answers, still not making eye contact, putting the first plate in the sink before it seems to occur to look for a cloth.

It takes Tony three tries to get the right drawer (again, he has a _machine_ to do his dishes for him), passes him a cloth, and says, “Aren’t you going with Bucky?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Steve answers. “Why?”

 _Because the two of you are here to look for Iron Man, and I’d really like it if you weren’t looking here?_ “No reason,” Tony lies. “I just figured, your leg seems to be mostly okay, so I thought you’d like to spend the day out and about with your boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Steve answers, putting the egg pan down on the draining rack just a little too hard. “No, um… I thought I’d stay here and draw some more, if that’s okay?”

Tony knows this is a ploy, knows it’s something he should be worrying about, and he wants to say no. Steve should be out looking for Iron Man with Bucky, unless he thinks there’s a reason to stay here, and that is decidedly not a good thing.

Of course, all refusing is going to do is make Steve think he’s got something to hide, so Tony just picks up a towel and the pan (now slightly dented, though Tony’s pretending not to have noticed that) and says, “Yeah, whatever, as long as you stay out of the way.”

“I’ll do my best,” Steve agrees, a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile on his face, and carries on with the dishes.

X

Tony heads to his garage as soon as they’ve finished with the breakfast pots, calling, “Put some shoes on before you come out here,” over his shoulder as he goes.

Given that Tony’s leaving him alone in the house, Steve figures he’s not likely to find anything useful in here, but that doesn’t mean he can’t take a quick look anyway. He darts upstairs to grab a pair of socks and his sneakers, then pauses for a fraction of a second outside the open door to Tony’s bedroom before the sound of metal clanking together in the garage convinces him it’s safe to go inside.

Tony’s bedroom is a lot plainer than Steve would have expected. Three of the walls are a grey so pale it’s almost white, while the fourth, the one with the bed on it, is navy. There’s a mirror on the wall next to the door (attached, nothing behind it), a closet on the other side of it (full of the same kind of well-worn clothes that are all Tony’s worn since they got here, as well as a single pair of black slacks, two button down shirts, and a suit bag containing a tuxedo that looks surprisingly expensive, not that Steve claims to be any kind of expert), and a nightstand by the bed (socks and underwear in the bottom drawer, while the contents of the top drawer leaves Steve blushing but can in no way be counted as evidence of anything other than a healthy libido).

The only decoration in the room is a single photograph on the wall opposite the bed, of a handsome Black man in a tuxedo and a stunning redheaded woman in a wedding dress. It’s candid rather than posed, and the two of them look so happy together that Steve finds himself lingering, wondering who they are and what their link to Tony is.

It’s a beautiful photo, no question of that, but the only thing it proves is that Tony has friends, so Steve drags himself away and heads back downstairs.

He’s already used cooking as an excuse to look in most of the kitchen cupboards, but he checks the ones he’s not been in yet, then proceeds to the living room. Tony’s books come off the shelves one by one (no power on Earth could make Steve admit he’s hoping one of them opens a secret doorway behind the shelves, but he absolutely is), and it doesn’t take more than five minutes for Steve to verify that every disk in Tony’s meagre DVD collection matches the box it’s in.

There’s nothing in the house to suggest Tony is anything other than a car mechanic who lives an average, unexciting life, and Steve figures he can put his search on hold until he gets the opportunity to investigate Tony’s garage more thoroughly.

It’s a nice enough day that Steve decides against sitting inside, instead taking a pad of paper, a case of coloured pencils, and one of the chairs from the back of the garage and carrying them outside, careful not to bump the car Tony’s working on as he does so.

His first sketch is of the building as a whole, trees and blue sky in the background, a little rough, just warming up, and then he moves on to drawing the inside of the garage. The Mustang Tony’s working on is in the foreground, Tony leaning over it, shelves of spare parts and racks of tools lining the walls to either side, the collection of stained chairs and a set of battered drawers towards the back, and…

Steve pauses, taking his pencil away from the paper and just looking at the building for a moment, trying to work out what it is his brain is catching on.

The back wall isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

Even in the days when his eyes weren’t so good at distinguishing between colours, Steve had decent depth-perception. It’s only improved since he got the serum, to the point where Steve can estimate long distances to within a few feet, and he can say with absolute certainty that the inside of Tony’s garage is almost three feet shorter than it ought to be.

Whatever evidence there is to tie Tony to Iron Man, Steve would bet his shield that’s where it is.

Now he just needs to find a way in there.

X

By the time lunchtime rolls around, Tony is still elbow deep in his car engine and doesn’t seem likely to leave it anytime soon. Steve, tired of watching and waiting for him to leave, offers to buy them lunch from the diner rather than cook something (and the fact that two breakfasts, the lunch and the dinner he’s already made since he’s been here are close to exhausting his culinary repertoire has nothing to do with it) and gets a shrug and a vague, non-verbal sound in response.

It’s as close to a yes as he’s going to get, Steve decides, and sets out, just happening to circle the building as he goes.

The emergency exit is in the same place on the back of the garage as it is on the inside, but all that tells Steve is that Tony is committed to convincing people there’s nothing special about the building. He remembers seeing a push-bar on the inside, so Steve isn’t surprised by the absence of a handle on the outside for him to wiggle to see if he can open it. He’s able to get his fingers round the edge of the door, but it doesn’t budge under a human level of strength; short of ripping it off its hinges and breaking in that way, there’s not a whole lot Steve can do from this side, which means he needs to get Tony out of there somehow.

He muses on it as he walks to the diner, orders Tony the same burger he had on their first evening there and a coffee large and strong enough that it probably isn’t legal to sell it, gets himself a tray of mac and cheese, and heads back to Tony’s shop.

He’s half hoping for Bucky to join him, emerging out of the shadows in that mildly disconcerting way he has, and it would be so much easier if he did. He might not have completely bought into Steve’s theory, but if Steve asked him to distract Tony long enough for him to check behind that door, he would, and he’d do so a hell of a lot more skillfully than Steve could manage it.

But no matter how much Steve dawdles, Bucky doesn’t appear, and eventually he has to give up and head back inside.

Tony can’t spend the whole day in his garage, after all, and as soon as he leaves it, Steve is going to get that door open.

X

Steve insists on doing the dishes by hand again, like the twentieth century fuddy-duddy he obviously is, and this time Tony doesn’t bother to offer to dry. Instead, he leaves him to it and heads upstairs to see if Cap has left any evidence of his search behind.

To Tony’s surprise, the room looks entirely undisturbed, to the point where if JARVIS hadn’t told him Steve was searching his room, he wouldn’t know it had happened. His closet and drawers are still closed, his bed is still the same level of unmade, the pile of dirty laundry in the corner by the window doesn’t seem to have been touched at all.

Come to think of it, Tony should probably take care of that before he runs out of clean underwear.

“I’m gonna do laundry,” he shouts downstairs. “You or Bucky want anything putting in?”

“No thanks,” Steve calls back. Tony pauses a moment, checking he can still hear the splash of water and clack of dishes being moved, then sets about stripping his bed.

He’s part way through gathering up the clothes from his floor when JARVIS speaks, his voice quiet, coming not from Tony’s bedroom speakers but from the phone in his pocket.

“Sir, I believe you’ll want to relocate to your garage posthaste,” he says. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, the captain is attempting to gain access to your workshop in the basement.”

He’s not actually going to succeed, Tony is as sure as he can be of that fact. He’s not prepared to say that no one could hack the technology he has keeping that door sealed, if only because Pepper’s lectures on the perils of tempting fate are both completely illogical and improbably persuasive, but he refuses to believe a man who fights with an oversized metal frisbee and was wowed by the special effects in the original trilogy (which, yeah, were good for their time, but are a long way from noteworthy compared to movies today) is capable of it.

The only way Cap is getting through that door is if he rips it open, and- Actually, based on his experience fighting alongside the man, Tony can’t be confident he won’t do exactly that.

He takes the stairs two at a time, flings his armful of laundry in the direction of the machine, and charges into the garage, ready to demand Steve tell him what he’s doing, because even if he was a regular person he’s pretty sure he still wouldn’t want someone who is practically a stranger poking around his private space.

And then he freezes, because Steve might be hovering at the back of the garage, worryingly close to the fake emergency exit leading to Tony’s basement, but he’s got his shirt off and Tony thinks he can be forgiven for giving that fact his undivided attention.

Wow. Just- wow.

“Tony!” Steve exclaims, clutching the shirt to his chest. Which, on the one hand, sad, but on the other, makes his biceps bulge in a very pleasing manner. “I was just… I was looking for you!”

“For me,” Tony says, completely flat. “You watched me go upstairs all of two minutes ago.”

“I thought I heard you come back down,” Steve very obviously lies. “You said you were doing laundry, so I wanted to ask if you’d put my shirt in too. I spilt juice on it.”

Tony has no idea what to do with that statement. Maybe it’s the shock of finding himself face to pec with one of the hottest guys on the planet, but his brain isn’t doing too well at the thinking thing.

Captain America is using his physical appearance to distract him. That’s what’s happening here, right?

Actually, Tony knows exactly what he wants to do with that statement, if only because he wants to see Steve’s expression when he does so.

“Are you coming on to me?”

“Am I…?” Steve blinks, his knuckles paling as he momentarily clenches his grip on his shirt, and then he drops it on the floor and takes a step towards Tony. “Yes,” he says decisively. “Yeah, I am.”

 _Don’t you dare, Stark_ , Tony tells himself, as he watches Steve borderline prowl across the garage towards him, all those gorgeous muscles on display, his expression not so much seductive as it is really goddamn stubborn. He is too old to be playing chicken, even if it is with Captain America, even if he would very, very much like to.

Steve is right in front of him now, reaching out to rest his hand on Tony’s cheek, a barely perceptible tremor to his fingers as he does so, and then he’s leaning in, close enough that Tony can feel his breath on his face as he says, “Is this okay?”

Fuck, Tony really hates that he can’t say yes to that.

“Not sure I’m the one you should be asking that,” he says, for once retreating rather than continuing to push. “I’m thinking Mr Tall, Dark and Deadly might have something to say about it.”

“It was his idea,” Steve says, then blinks again, though this time it seems to be surprise at his own words rather than at Tony’s. “Shit, please pretend I didn’t say that.”

 _Oh hell no_ , is Tony’s first thought. He can be strong enough to walk away from a make out session with Captain America, but Steve looks so mortified to have said it that Tony knows it must be true, and he just isn’t nice enough to leave that alone. “Your boyfriend told you to come on to me.”

“It’s complicated?” Steve says, looking tremendously uncomfortable, then backtracks to where he dropped his shirt. Tony gets a few seconds to enjoy the view as he bends over to pick it up, then finds himself mourning the disappearance of all that rippling muscle as Steve straightens up and puts his shirt back on, revealing a giant orange juice stain across the front of it.

 _Well_ , Tony thinks. _At least he committed to his cover story_

“I’ve got time, if you want to talk about it,” he offers, only a little bit against his better judgement. “C’mon, I’ll put a pot of coffee on.”


	11. Chapter Ten

Tony heads into the kitchen and puts the coffee on, setting out two mugs, creamer, a couple of packets of sugar, and a bottle of whiskey, because he thinks this conversation is going to require it.

He waits until he’s got everything ready before looking at Steve. The other man is sitting in the same chair he’s occupied at breakfast and lunch the last two days, though he looks an awful lot smaller now, uncomfortably hunched in on himself, and Tony feels almost guilty about it.

Not enough to let it go, though, so he fixes himself a very Irish coffee, sits opposite Steve and waits.

It takes more time than he’d anticipated, but eventually Steve seems to come out of his funk, reaches for the cup Tony put in front of him, and says, “Bucky’s ace.”

Tony blinks, startled; he doesn’t actually know what he was expecting Cap to say, only that that is not something that had even crossed his mind.

“Asexual,” Steve elaborates, apparently taking Tony’s silence for confusion. “It means-”

“Yeah, no, I know what asexuality is,” Tony tells him. “I’m just surprised. The two of you seem so… together.”

Steve straightens up, muscles tensing, a stubborn set to his jaw that looks exactly like it does whenever Captain America is about to start chewing out Iron Man for interfering. “We _are_ together,” he says adamantly. “People don’t have to be having sex to be in a relationship.”

Tony puts his mug down, just in case Steve is as willing to punch him as he looks. “Yeah, sorry,” he says, raising his hands in surrender, because he knows better than to keep digging, even if his comment was more about how handsy Bucky is rather than intended to cast aspersions upon the validity of their relationship. “So, what does that have to do with you coming on to me?”

“It’s-” Steve starts, then stalls, his expression going from indignant back to uncomfortable. “Bucky is… He worries that it’s not enough for me, I think. That I’m not happy with him, and should- well. Be with other people?”

Tony deems it safe to pick his coffee up again, taking a sip, the whiskey burning the back of his throat. “Other people in general, or other people me specifically?”

Steve frowns at him. “Does that matter?”

“One of you doesn’t feel sexual attraction, the other presumably does, so…” Cap’s frown is only getting frownier, effectively forcing Tony’s sentence to an early end. “No, it only matters to my ego,” he concludes, because, yeah, he’d kind of like to know if flirting with him was Bucky’s idea or Steve’s, if it’s the guy who might want to sleep with him or the one who definitely doesn’t, but since it’s clearly not going to happen it doesn’t actually change things. “So, your boyfriend wants you to sleep with other people. Have you tried telling him you don’t want to?”

“Well, gee, that never occurred to me,” Steve says, and Tony lets out a decidedly inelegant noise in response. “I have, more than once. I’ve told him I don’t want to sleep with someone I’m not in a relationship with and I don’t want to be in a relationship unless he’s in it too. I’ve said it and said it until I’m blue in the face, but he’s determined.”

“Want me to tell him for you?” Tony offers, because he momentarily forgets he’s not talking to Pepper or Rhodey or someone he might actually be comfortable doing that for, as opposed to, you know, _Captain America_.

“God, no,” Steve answers, right on the heels of Tony’s offer. “No, I think that would be unpleasant for all of us.”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees, throwing back the rest of his coffee, then pushing himself to his feet. “C’mon. I’ve got a car to work on, and you probably want to get back to your drawing or whatever.”

Steve nods, and follows him back out to the garage again.

X

 _It’s fine_ , Steve tells himself as he takes out his pencils again, this time determined to draw anything other than Tony. _You weren’t actually about to kiss him before he asked you what Bucky would say_.

There’s a niggling voice in his head that tells him otherwise, though, and a sinking feeling in his stomach that is distressingly close to disappointment at losing the opportunity to do so.

Given how adamant he was about not being interested, there’s no way Steve can actually be bothered by Tony’s lack of response to his flirting, right?

X

When the quinjet flies overhead, Bucky is almost as far away from Tony’s shop as he can be without leaving town. He sets off running immediately, because if one of the team has come to get them in the jet rather than by car, it’s the kind of emergency that merits Bucky breaking his cover.

Despite the complete absence of satellites in the area, whoever’s piloting flies unerringly towards the shop, and Bucky gets there in time to see the hatch open and Natalia walk down the ramp.

“Mission, Soldier!” she calls in place of greeting. “Get Steve, we need to go.”

“Good to see you too, Widow,” he answers, though he also carries on walking in deference to the urgent nature of her demand.

It started raining about an hour ago, so Bucky isn’t surprised to see the rolling door to the garage is closed. It doesn’t open when he yanks at it, and given the noise coming from behind it (a combination of _Black Sabbath_ and metal hitting metal, both of which must be absolute hell on Steve’s ears) Bucky doesn’t expect banging on it to get any reaction; instead of trying it, he goes straight into the house, running upstairs to grab the bags containing their clothes, the rest of his arsenal, and Steve’s shield, then charges back downstairs and into the garage.

“Gotta go, Stevie,” he announces, only just louder than the music and Tony’s racket.

Steve looks at him, then over his shoulder, which is when Bucky realises Natalia has followed him inside.

“Okay,” he says immediately, standing up and placing the notepad and pencils on the chair. To Bucky’s – and, judging by her expression, also Natalia’s – surprise, he walks over to Tony and holds out his hand. “Thank you for putting us up, Tony. Let us know when the truck’s finished, and we’ll come pick it up.”

Bucky watches as Tony shakes Steve’s hand, grinning, and says, “Sure thing, Cap. Be careful out there.”

“Always am,” Steve replies.

“Liar,” Bucky and Natalia say simultaneously, while Tony just scoffs.

“Besides,” she adds, her eyes fixed on Tony, a slightly dangerous smile playing across her face, “it’s the Zoomaton again, so I’m sure Iron Man will show up to help.”

Tony flinches, and Bucky’s stomach lurches – not sinks, because it’s not necessarily a bad feeling, just a surprising one – as he realises he should probably apologise for not taking Steve’s concerns seriously. Steve told him he thought Tony was connected to Iron Man, told him he thought Tony might know who they were, and Bucky more or less accused him of thinking with his dick, using investigating Tony as an excuse to stay close to him, like Steve has ever once allowed his libido to overrule his brain.

Though, yeah, Bucky might have screwed that up, but that doesn’t change the fact that Steve likes the guy.

Still. Apologising.

As soon as they’re on the jet and out of Iron Man’s hearing, that is.

X

Tony shouldn’t. He absolutely, utterly should not follow Steve, Bucky, and the woman (Black Widow, fuck, and Tony is absolutely one hundred percent certain she not only knows his vigilante alter-ego but also his actual name and date of birth and every thought he’s ever had his whole life just from looking at him) wherever it is they’re going. Instead, he should be collecting his very few precious possessions and getting the hell out of there, leaving behind Tony Edwards in the burned wreckage of his life there.

He really has had two of the Avengers staying in his home, and, worse, he proved that he knew it when he stupidly decided to call Steve Cap to his face rather than just in his head. 

He’s had Captain America and the Winter Soldier in his home, Captain America _investigating_ his home like he knows there’s something not on the up-and-up about it, and Black Widow looking at him like she knows _him_ , and it is not at all an overreaction to decide he needs to be out of here before they’re done fighting the Zoomaton and have the opportunity to come after him. Before they arrest him for taking the law into his own hands, attacking homes and businesses and occasionally people, and never mind the fact that everyone he went after was a threat to him, his people, or the world as a whole. Before they throw him in the government’s super-secret underwater prison for people too dangerous to be kept in the regular kind, before he’s locked up without a trial or legal representation or an end date to his sentence.

Even if they don’t know that he’s Iron Man, it’s damn clear that they suspect him of something, and every minute Tony Edwards continues to exist is a minute closer to them deciding they should bring him in for interrogation (because oh, Tony knows the reputation Black Widow had when she was still a Russian agent, and he’s already got enough experience with torture to know he doesn’t want her laying a finger on him).

He’s disappeared before, and it’s time for him to do so again.

Why, then, is he putting on his armour?


	12. Chapter Eleven

“Yeah, I know, you were right,” Bucky says, once Natalia is in the pilot’s seat and they’re in the air. “He definitely knows something.”

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Steve answers, already down to his underwear before pulling out the backup uniform that lives on the jet. “But since you brought it up, yeah, I might as well. I told you so.”

“You did,” Bucky agrees, glancing towards the cockpit, where Natalia is blatantly eyeing the pair of them as they get changed, the creep. Still, it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, given that modesty wasn’t something the Red Room particularly prized in their assassins, so Bucky ignores her, carefully peeling off the silicon sleeve that covers his metal arm (replacing them costs a fortune, and Bucky is tired of getting bawled out by Fury for ripping them) before he pulls on his own uniform. “Though, for what it’s worth, I’m also right about you liking him.”

Steve blushes, the flush of colour extending all the way from his ears to halfway down his chest. “Maybe,” he admits, which, you know, _unexpected_. He tugs his uniform up over his shoulders, then turns his back on Bucky. “Zip me up?”

Bucky does so, brushing his lips to Steve’s neck before helping him get his ridiculous cowl over his head. “Maybe?”

Steve’s still pink as he turns around again, adjusting his vast array of straps and buckles and pockets. “He caught me investigating,” he says, and Bucky has no idea how he manages to look vindicated and embarrassed at the same time. “I” – he flashes a glance at Natalia, who is now trying very hard to look like she’s focusing on flying the jet rather than listening to them – “tried your suggestion. It didn’t work.”

Bucky doesn’t laugh at him, if only because his leather pants are a bitch to get into now that he’s holding his own puppet strings and understands how undignified the struggle to put them on is. “No?”

“He asked what you’d think,” Steve admits. “I told him it was your idea.”

Now, Bucky does have to laugh, and Natalia lets out a little huff that might be amusement, exasperation or, knowing her, probably both.

“You’re lucky I love you,” Bucky tells him, submitting with good grace as Steve insists on tugging just about every inch of his armour to make sure it’s fastened well enough. “Dumbass.”

Natalia laughs again, looking back over her shoulder at them again. “Two minute warning, boys,” she calls, before spinning the jet around sharply as she looks for a safe place to land.

X

Because of his vastly superior flying capabilities, Tony can’t arrive at the fight more than a few minutes after Cap, Widow and the Soldier do, though he loses another couple assessing the fight and trying to decide if he really does want to jump in or if he should get the hell out of there before someone notices him.

The Zoomaton’s robot animal militia seems to be largely avian today, everything from hummingbirds to pterosaurs (yes, okay, Tony knows they’re reptiles, but he’s also rather more occupied with shooting them than correcting Thor when he calls them birds). Hulk seems to be taking great joy in jumping on and ripping apart some of the larger ones, and Thor is alternating between electrocuting and smashing them, but the smaller ones seem to be somewhat more problematic.

They’re fast, too fast for Hawkeye, Widow or the Soldier to easily target, and there are too many civilians still in the area for them to risk firing indiscriminately. Cap and Wilson seem to be doing their best to evacuate them, and the shield is passed between them almost as fast as the hummingbirds that are swooping down at anyone who stands still too long.

“Fuck it,” he says, because he can’t in good conscience let anyone get hurt if he’s in a position to prevent it. Delaying his disappearance a few hours won’t kill him, and he can always blast his way out of there when all the robots are down if he has to.

“Patch me in, J,” Tony instructs, then divebombs the mess of pigeons currently pestering two women with a toddler in a buggy. The birds scatter, but not before Tony manages to obliterate half a dozen of them with his repulsors, and he herds the family into the closest building, instructing them to close the door behind him and stay out of sight.

The fight after that is a mess of birds and blasts, dodging as many attacks as he can while focusing on keeping the birds’ attention on him and the Avengers rather than unfortunate citizens, and listening to the Avengers shout instructions and obscenities at one another on their not remotely secure communication system. He catches Hawkeye when he leaps off a building without checking one of the flyers is in place to grab him, retrieves Cap’s shield when it bounces off an eagle that unexpectedly inserts itself into its trajectory, and deposits Widow on the back of a quetzalcoatlus at her request (well, demand), all within the space of about five minutes.

“Oi, Wilson,” he shouts, watching in equal parts wonder and terror as Widow effectively disables the giraffe-sized pterosaur before flipping from its falling body and landing on her feet. “Could you ask them to maybe quit attacking us?”

“You gotta spend less time on the hero forums, Iron Man,” Falcon replies, bringing the shield down on a seagull’s metal skull before flinging it back in Cap’s direction. “I can’t actually talk to birds, and even if I could I don’t think robotic ones would listen.”

“Pity,” the Soldier puts in over the comms. “You might actually be useful that way.”

“Screw you, Ba- Soldier,” Falcon yells back.

Tony laughs, temporarily not even caring that the change of name is obviously for his benefit, and dives back into the fray.

The most surprising part of the whole thing comes near the end, when Widow, Falcon and the Soldier have Zoomaton surrounded, Hulk is leaping joyfully on the wreckage of a flock of penguins, Thor is helping a slightly battered Hawkeye towards medical assistance, and Tony and Cap are finishing off the last of the robots. Tony uses his last cluster missiles to take out the handful of hummingbirds that are surrounding him, then turns in time to see a stork hurtling towards Steve from behind, its long beak already bloody and heading right for his torso.

“Get down, Steve!” Tony shouts, and is shocked when Cap immediately drops to the floor, the stork passing harmlessly through the space he previously occupied and straight into Tony’s laser blast.

Steve rolls, then pushes himself to his feet. “Thanks,” he says, which hasn’t once happened in all the times Tony’s fought alongside the Avengers. “Tony.”

“Welcome,” Tony answers rotely, while his brain goes _ohfuckohfuckohfuck you just confirmed your identity you absolute fucking idiot oh fuck_.

Cap nods, flashes him the same grin Steve’s given him on multiple occasions over the last few days, and then chucks his shield at something behind Tony.

It’s a pity, Tony thinks, that he has to disappear himself as soon as the fight is done. When he’s not being Captain Asshole, Steve’s actually the kind of guy he’d like to get to know better.

X

The second the Zoomaton is in cuffs and the last robot emu (and, really, what the fuck? Are the actual birds not ridiculous enough already?) hits the ground, Iron Man is out of there, barely a flash of red and gold and electric blue light on the horizon.

“Huh,” Bucky says, half to Natalia, half to himself. “I kinda figured he’d stick around a bit longer, now that we know who he is.”

“ _How are you such an idiot?_ ” Natalia mutters, dipping into Russian to insult him, then raises her voice and reverts to English again. “Rogers! Get your ass over here, you and Barnes are going after Iron Man!”

Steve makes his way over to them at an only slightly uneven jog (the fight must have aggravated his leg injury again, Bucky assumes, despite the dumbass insisting it was completely better this morning). “What’s up?”

“You’re going after Iron Man,” Natalia repeats, her arms folded, a _do not fuck with me_ expression on her face. “Now.”

Steve, of course, is completely capable of reading such expressions, and absolutely incapable of obeying them. “We know who and where he is now,” he says, rather than immediately jumping to. “What’s the rush?”

“We know who and where he is now,” Natalia tells him slowly, managing to make the words mean something entirely different to when Steve said them. “Which means he’s going to disappear again, and that’s not something we want to happen.”

Bucky looks at Steve, hoping he’s figured out something more than he has. Steve just shrugs, very unhelpfully, which leaves Bucky to ask, “You know this how?”

“Because he’s done it before?” Natalia offers, shaking her head at their blank expressions. “You said you know who he is! _Idiots_. Go, now, and tell him we want him to join up. He’ll trust you more than me.” When they don’t immediately move, she sighs, rubbing her temple like they’re giving her a headache, then says, “Please?”

Her insistence is weird, when everyone but Steve has previously expressed an interest in having Iron Man join them, and even he’s coming around on the matter. They all know they need Iron Man’s technology, that opponents like the Zoomaton would be a hell of a lot more difficult to subdue without Iron Man apparently taking a personal interest in bringing him down, and the fact that she’s working so hard to convince them of it definitely seems excessive.

But her mind is made up, it seems, and they both know better than to argue further when she’s determined enough to say please; Steve shrugs again, Bucky nods, and Natalia continues cursing them in Russian as they move as one towards the quinjet.


	13. Chapter Twelve

They’re up in the air and well on their way to Tony’s shop, and Bucky can’t stop his brain from obsessing. There’s what Natalia said, the way she very obviously knows something about Tony after looking at him for maybe a minute that Steve and Bucky haven’t figured out after staying with him for several days. There’s the fact that they’re about to ask him to join up, without knowing what his reaction is likely to be or, if Natalia’s urgency is to be believed, whether he’ll even be there when they arrive.

There’s the fact that Steve refused to even consider the possibility that he might be attracted to Tony, but after flirting with him and telling him it was Bucky’s idea is now actually admitting to it, and the whole conversation that happened between those two things that Bucky knows absolutely nothing about.

“So,” he says, because he doesn’t stand a chance of figuring out Natalia’s motivation without more information so he might as well focus on this. “What did Tony say?”

Steve jerks like Bucky’s interrupted thoughts every bit as obsessive and convoluted as his own. “What’s that?”

“When you told him it was my fault you were trying to get into his pants,” Bucky elaborates. “What did he say?”

Steve winces, says, “It wasn’t quite like that,” and then winces a second time; since he should be more than used to Bucky’s crassness by now, he has to assume it’s at his own thoughts. “Shit, Bucky, I outed you! That was such a shitty thing to do, I’m so sorry, please. Fuck, I can’t believe I-”

“Breathe, Stevie,” Bucky interrupts, taking one hand off the jet controls and reaching out to him, rubbing his leg because that’s the first thing his hand lands on. “Deep breaths, then explain again slightly slower, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says, wrapping both of his hands around the one Bucky’s extended to him and actually taking a minute to calm down, something that never once happened when he was tiny and asthmatic and really could have done with trying it. “Okay. He wanted to know why you wanted me to sleep with other people, and I didn’t even try to think of a lie. I just- told him. That we’re together, that you don’t want sex, that you have this stupid idea that I should have sex with other people instead…”

Bucky gives it a minute, just in case Steve isn’t finished yet, but that seems to be the end of it. “Dumbass,” Bucky says, because that about sums it up, but he’s certain Steve knows he’s saying it affectionately. “It’s fine, Steve. I’m not saying I want to go around telling everyone, but this once isn’t a big deal, so you can stop freaking out about it, understand?”

“Understood,” Steve says softly. “Thanks, Buck.”

_Dumbass_ , Bucky doesn’t say again, but he wants to. “What did Tony say to that?” he asks instead.

“He offered to tell you to stop trying to encourage me to date people you don’t want to date too, I told him that was an absolutely awful idea, and that was about the end of it. You and Nat got there maybe an hour later.”

“Okay,” Bucky tells him, because it is, of course it is. And then, because sometimes he’s almost as bad as Steve is at leaving things well alone, “If you really wanted us to date someone, I’d consider it. It’s just- without knowing how they’d take it, I wouldn’t want to suggest it, you know?”

Steve makes a little agreeing noise, squeezes his hand, and then releases it in time for Bucky to begin the landing sequence outside Tony’s shop. 

“For what it’s worth,” he says a little later, in the space between landing and the door opening. “I think he took it pretty well.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, knowing that Steve will understand what he’s asking, that he wants Steve to confirm this, a relationship with Tony, is something he’d want them to go for, if going for it happened to be an option.

“Yeah,” Steve says firmly, and leads them outside.

X

The garage isn’t Tony’s only place. It might be the one he likes best, and the life he’s built there might be one he’s comfortable with, but he’s got a handful of other homes and identities across the country, just waiting for him to step into them.

He’s not flying back there because it’s his home, because that would be sentimental and stupid. What he is doing is heading home to blow it up, because even if the Avengers are the good guys, there’s a whole lot of stuff in there Tony doesn’t want them getting their hands on.

The charges have been set since the moment he built his basement there, ready to bring the place down and destroy everything Tony’s worked on in the years since he left SI. He just needs to be in range.

And thank God for that, because being in range also happens to mean he’s close enough to see a car parked out front, alongside Steve’s truck and the Mazda Tony is supposed to be working on tomorrow.

Pepper’s car.

“Fuck!” Tony announces, because Pepper and Rhodey have keys to his place, so if her car is outside then it’s almost certain at least one of them is inside. “JARVIS, get them out of there!”

“Being aware of your intentions, I have already made an attempt to do so, Sir,” JARVIS replies crisply. “Ms Potts-Rhodes and Colonel Rhodes have expressed concern for your welfare, and are refusing to vacate the premises until they have the opportunity to verify your well-being.”

“Fuck!” Tony shouts a second time, squeezing an extra burst of speed out of the suit, covering the last few miles in under a minute and landing with enough force to leave a crater in the lot outside his workshop.

“I’m fine!” he calls, opening the faceplate but not even starting to remove his armour before he storms inside. “You have to get out of here.”

Pepper emerges from the garage and immediately heads to the stove, filling the kettle that lives there and setting about fixing tea while it heats up. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Do you know how long we’ve driven to get here?”

Tony turns the stove off, puts his hand on her shoulder, and starts to move her towards the door, the effort somewhat hampered by his unwillingness to hurt her when she refuses to walk with him. “I’ll pay for gas,” he tells her. “I’ll pay for the fanciest hotel you can find within a hundred miles. I’ll buy you dinner and wine and new shoes and whatever the hell else you want, but we need to go now.”

“You left me your company, Tony. I can buy my own shoes,” she answers, stepping to one side and planting her hands on her hips, decidedly unswayable.

“She can and she does,” Rhodey chimes in, standing in the doorway to the living room. “Take that thing off and come sit down, Tones.”

“I will!” Tony tells them, turning off the stove a second time, not entirely sure when he took his eyes off Pepper long enough for her to turn it on again. “Just not here. Somewhere a long, long way from here, please, guys.”

Neither of them gives any indication that they actually recognise the urgency he’s feeling right now. Rhodey sighs, folding his arms. Pepper turns the stove on again.

Tony misses the days when they took him on faith, he really does. Sure, he can’t actually _remember_ those days, and he doesn’t think they lasted all that long, but his point still stands, and he really hates that he has to waste time explaining his mistakes to them.

“I fucked up, the Avengers have found me, and now I need to disappear again,” he says, which does not result in the urgent exit he was hoping for.

“You said they hadn’t _found you_ found you,” Rhodey replies, uncrossing his arms in order to do air quotes, still leaning against the door frame like he hasn’t got a care in the world.

“Well, now they have, so I need to disappear again before they show up, and goddamnit Pepper would you leave the fucking stove alone! We do not have time for tea!”

Shouting at her was a mistake, Tony knows that even before she draws herself up to her full five-eight-plus-terrifying-heels. Shouting at Pepper is a mistake people are only ever allowed to make once, and it doesn’t matter that Tony’s wearing armour, that he’s more than capable of defending himself from just about anything. Right now, he wants nothing more than to pull down his faceplate and fly the hell out of there rather than deal with the fallout of the colossal idiocy that is shouting at Virginia Potts-Rhodes.

But he can’t, because the Avengers will be on their way, and there’s a hell of a lot of shit in his basement they can’t be allowed to discover.

Pepper should really take it as a compliment that the superheroes coming to put him behind bars are not currently his number one priority. Maybe if Tony tells her that, she’ll let his stupidity slide for now.

“Anthony Edward Stark,” she says, which has Tony very much revising that idea. “Do you really think-”

She cuts herself off, paling quite dramatically, her gaze fixed on something over his shoulder, and Tony’s hands are already raised to attack as he turns around.

“Well,” Bucky says, sounding a lot less tense than Tony would, in his shoes. “I guess we know what Nat meant when she said he’d disappeared before.”

X

“That is absolutely your fault,” Tony says, presumably to the redheaded woman Steve saw in the wedding photo in his bedroom. It’s not easy to tell, when he’s currently glaring at Steve and Bucky, hands raised like he fully intends to shoot them, but since she’s the one who called him by his full name it seems a reasonable assumption to make. “When you lose the company and wind up in the windowless cell next to mine, I really hope you remember that.”

“Why would she lose the company?” Bucky asks, though Steve really feels like that should take second place to his, “Windowless cell?”

“Tony, no one is ending up in a cell,” the man from the photo says; it may be the only sentence Steve’s ever heard him speak, but he thinks it’s safe to say he sounds decidedly long-suffering.

“Unless I kill you for depriving me of tea,” the woman adds, turning the stove on, then rounding Tony and approaching Steve and Bucky, despite the mechanic’s protests.

“Good afternoon,” she says, offering Steve her hand. “I’m Virginia Potts-Rhodes, owner and CEO of Stark Industries. This is my husband, Colonel James Rhodes of the US Air Force, and I understand you’ve already met Tony. Would either of you care for a drink?”

“Um,” Steve manages.

Bucky’s sigh is almost inaudible, though Steve’s squeak after he plants an elbow in his side is unfortunately, embarrassingly not. “Bucky Barnes, ma’am, sir,” he says, shaking the hand she’s offered to Steve, then saluting Colonel Rhodes. “This silent idiot is Steve Rogers, and I think we’d prefer to just have a quick word with Tony, if that’s okay.”

“It’s not!” Tony says. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Of course,” Virginia says, continuing to ignore him. “Colonel Rhodes and I will wait in the living room.”

She nods sharply, and has removed herself and her husband from the room before Steve has even finished absorbing her threat (because he can see no reason for her to have put so much emphasis on her position in business and her husband’s in the military other than to ensure he and Bucky know just how powerful they are, and just how much difficult they’re capable of making things for the Avengers if something happens to their friend).

“We’re not here to arrest you, Tony,” Bucky says, once Virginia has closed the door to the living room just enough to give the illusion of privacy. “We’d like you to come on board.”

Tony blinks, finally lowering the hand he’s had raised to blast them since Bucky first spoke. “On board what?” he asks, a brief flicker of confusion crossing his face before he narrows his eyes, an angry edge entering his voice as he adds, “I already said I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“No,” Steve says, when Bucky doesn’t immediately answer. “We want you to join the Avengers.”

Tony’s silent long enough that Steve starts to feel uncomfortable, wondering what exactly he’s said wrong. He thought it was a clear statement, and hopefully a reassuring one, given what Tony said about windowless cells, but apparently Tony isn’t on the same page.

Steve looks at Bucky, hoping for reassurance. He gets a shrug, which is nowhere near as helpful as he might have liked.

“What,” Tony says eventually, too flat to really be a question. “But you hate me.”

His gaze is too focused on Steve for him to expect Bucky to answer this one, so he does his best to smile as he says, “No, I don’t.”

Tony scoffs.

“I didn’t _trust_ you,” Steve elaborates. “We didn’t know who you were, or whether you were working for someone else, but we’ve met you properly now. We know we can rely on you, and we’d like it if you fought beside us on a more permanent basis.”

“You…” Tony shakes his head, then turns around, stomping over to the table and sitting down in a chair that really doesn’t look strong enough to support him in the suit. “No, sorry, run that by me again.”

“Join the Avengers,” Steve says obligingly. “Fight with us. Help us protect people.”

“And come for dinner,” Bucky adds.

Steve turns to him, surprised. When they left the jet, Bucky was saying he’d be willing to consider them dating someone else, and, yes, it was implied that the someone else would or at least _could_ be Tony, but he did think the consideration might take a little longer.

Bucky nods at him, his hand coming up to take Steve’s, fingers tangling together.

“Only if it’s with both of you,” Tony says. “I’m not dating one of you and not the other.”

“Both of us,” Bucky confirms. He squeezes Steve’s fingers, then squeezes harder, until Steve’s brain finally gets with the program.

“Yes, both of us. If you want to.”

Tony looks at them, one then the other, and then grins. “I guess I will go somewhere with you after all,” he says, sounding more confident and more relaxed than he has since they got there. “You can continue trying to talk me into joining your little gang while we eat, I suppose.”

He’s still wearing his armour, and Steve and Bucky are both in uniform too, though they left Bucky’s mask and goggles and Steve’s cowl on the jet. However, he doesn’t seem remotely put off by this as he leads them out of the house, and Steve figures if he doesn’t care about it, they don’t have to care either.

As he closes the door behind them, Steve hears Colonel Rhodes say, “See, I told you he was making a fuss about nothing.”


	14. Epilogue

“Oh, hey,” Tony says later, after he’s watched Steve and Bucky devour two burgers, three plates of fries, a tray of lasagne, and almost two pecan pies between them (and the only reason they didn’t finish the second pie is because Steve once against insisted on Tony having some). After they’ve convinced him that yes, they really do want to date him and yes, they really do want him to join the Avengers and yes, he really can say no to either or both of those propositions without winding up in jail. After he’s agreed that he’ll buy them both dinner next time he’s in the city and that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if they gave him a call next time there’s a villain they want his help with. 

After they’ve walked back to his home and their jet, after Steve has asked, again, if Tony’s okay with him leaning in for a kiss, after Bucky has kissed him too, with a lot more teeth and tongue and tugging at his hair than Steve did, after they’ve said goodnight and made sure Tony knows how to contact them and Tony’s given them his contact details in return. 

“Oh, hey,” Tony says. “That whole romance novel thing was just a cover, right?”

Bucky laughs, and boards the jet without answering him.

X

Three months later, the first time he stays over, he falls asleep with Steve plastered against his spine and Bucky tucked against his chest. He sleeps long and deep, far better than he usually does, and wakes up many hours later to an empty bed (because they really do both go running in the morning, when they have the option and aren’t secretly looking for superheroes hiding out in small towns). Steve’s place is now occupied by his sketchbook, which Tony has had many an opportunity to look through, but in front of him…

In front of him is the notebook Bucky took with him to the diner, filled with chicken-scratch handwriting that only occasionally drifts into crossed-out Cyrillic.

Tony sits up, reaching for the cup of coffee they’ve left at the side of the bed for him, and starts to read.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [dreaminglypeach](https://dreaminglypeach.tumblr.com/) and Wren at [MassiveSpaceWren](https://massivespacewren.tumblr.com/). Please, please go rave about the art there, won't you?
> 
> If you love identity porn and WIS as much as I hope you do, you can also read [He'd Like to Come and Meet Us (But He Thinks He'd Blow Our Mind)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418868) by ceealaina, inspired by the same art!
> 
> Bingo info:  
>  **Title:** They Never Went Further, They Never Went Back  
>  **Creator:** eachpeachpearplum  
>  **Rating:** Teen  
>  **Ship:** Steve/Tony/Bucky  
>  **Major tags:** identity porn, vigilante Iron Man, polyamory negotiations, asexual Bucky  
>  **Summary:** The vigilante Iron Man is in the habit of showing up at a fight and disappearing again when it's done, whether the Avengers want his help or not. Steve has had more than enough of it, which is why, when Bucky finally manages to get him with a tracker before he flies off, Steve isn't going to let a little thing like a broken leg, an overprotective boyfriend, and a mysterious satellite deadzone get in the way of tracking him down.
> 
> Their - okay, fine, Steve's - truck breaking down on them might be a bit more of an obstacle, but at least the mechanic they've found, a guy called Tony, is nice enough to put them up - or should that be put up with them? - for a few nights while he works on repairing it.  
>  **Link:** https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420809  
>  **Word count:** 26,893  
>  **TSB card number:** 023  
>  **TSB squares filled:** War Machine (chapter six), Touch (chapter nine), Adopted - intimacy without sex (chapter ten), Epilogue (epilogue)  
>  **SSB squares filled:** love-hate relationship (chapter one), hospital wing (chapter two), Winter Soldier (chapter five), hurt/comfort (chapter seven), broken door (chapter nine), free square (chapter ten)  
>  **BBB squares filled:** Y2 - rescue mission (chapter one), C3 - free space (chapter two), C1 - recovering Bucky (chapter four), U4 - shoot first, ask later (chapter five), Y1 - hurt/comfort (chapter seven)  
>  **Stucky bingo squares filled:** D5 - Avengers compound (chapter one), B3 - reckless (chapter two), C3 - free square (chapter five), A5 - breakfast (chapter seven), E1 - teamwork (chapter eleven), D3 - Tony Stark (chapter twelve)


End file.
